


Angels, stars, my mother's madness

by the_silent_sea



Category: Criminal Minds, Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Angels, Bisexuality, Cannibalism, Drug Use, Gen, It is unlikely any good will come of this, Mental Health Issues, Roses, Spoilers for Hannibal series 1
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-16 20:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 23,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1361026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_silent_sea/pseuds/the_silent_sea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Dr Lecter is a personal friend of mine. An exceptionally brilliant, honourable and cultured man. If Dr Lecter is taking an interest in Dr Reid, then Dr Reid is very fortunate. That is all."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Friday evening in America (10.32 EST/7.32 PST)

10.32 EST/7.32 PST

It was Friday evening. All across America people were pursuing their usual humdrum activities.

...............

On Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas, a white woman in her early fifties entered the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood. At Lobster Moon she turned right and entered the Desert Passage. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head upwards. It was possible that she was praying. And then again, maybe not. She had a strong, compelling face with short brown hair, but everything about her spoke of neglect: her skin was pallid, her clothes were shabby and hung from her thin body, her shoes were broken.

She opened her eyes.

_Angels were descending on vast wings from the Miracle Mile's painted sky. There were hundreds - maybe thousands - of them. They thronged the cramped spaces of the Miracle Mile, but that no longer mattered because the painted sky was now a blue and glorious infinity. Angels were flying to meet her out of the boundlessness of All Space, All Time. The garish yellow, pink and turquoise lights of the stores and restaurants danced over them. Their feet were bare; their robes - all different colours - had the beauty and subtlety of wildflowers and made a garden for her eyes. The wind of their slowly beating wings ruffled her thin hair, and she thought, as she often did, that their toes were so adorable - like Spencer's when he was little. One angel descended and hung in the air in front of her. With its long fingers it gently tipped up her face and kissed her pale, dry lips. "Ithuriel!” she said and she thought - although it was always difficult to know exactly - that she heard it say her name. Diana._

In the Miracle Mile shopping mall Diana Reid opened her arms wide and began murmuring, rapidly and ecstatically, in a language she had invented to speak to the angels.

It was 7.32 p.m Pacific Standard Time.

...............

In Washington, in the Black Tulip Club on the south side of Dupont Circle, Reid was drifting through the darkness and the dancing, shimmering lights and the crowds of people, looking for Cosima. He was fretful and jittery. The music was like a weekend pass to someone else’s migraine and being this close to other people’s sexualised behaviour made his skin crawl. _When Cosima gets here it’ll be alright._ He kept saying it to himself. _When Cosima gets here it’ll be alright._

Why wasn’t she here? He texted her:

I’m here. Where u?

A lot of the dealers round Dupont didn’t like Reid much. He spent a lot of money, but he was prone to do his own tests on heroin; and if the tests proved that the heroin wasn’t the purity they’d claimed, then he’d go back and argue with them about it. Belo Rooney refused to sell to Reid anymore. “Look, man,” he’d said. “Either buy it to shoot up with or don’t buy it at all. Don’t fucking _play_ with it.” It wasn’t the money Reid cared about (no one cared less about money than Reid) — it was the principle of the thing. Facts were sacred and percentages were particularly so. But Cosima didn’t mind Reid testing her dope. She thought it was interesting. Cosima taught philosophy at Georgetown. Sometimes when he was high, Reid recited Kierkegaard in German. Cosima was probably the only dealer on the planet who knew what he was talking about.

“Hey, baby,” said Cosima, shimmering into view; her smile was sweet and happy, her dress was silver, her honey-coloured skin gleamed, her hair was a mass of ash-blond and brown corkscrew curls that went on for ever. But such beauty was wasted on Reid, who was only intent on getting through the next few miserable minutes so that he could reach the place of heavenly alrightness.

In a cubicle in the Black Tulip bathrooms they did a quick deal for 3 grams of heroin, 120 mg of oxycodone and 100 mg of ketamine. With any luck it would get him through the next fortnight, maybe even a bit longer. 

“You want I stay with?” said Cosima. She put her head on one side and smiled, like a human emoticon. “I’d better stay with. You look like hell.”

“Mmmm,” said Reid.

Cosima sat on the toilet. Her serenity was at least partly chemical, but her kindness was all her own. As for Reid, he was shaking so much that she ended up preparing the needle for him. He managed to shoot up on his own. He slumped…

…and found, sometime later, that he had reached the floor. _Was now sometime later or was now still now?_ He looked up at Cosima sitting on the toilet. The sordidness of the Black Tulip bathroom did not touch her. _She was a queen on a throne. She was the Empress in the Tarot; all benevolence, all gentleness, all wisdom, all motherhood. Not his mother, a much more together…_ His eyelids started to droop.

With an ease born of long practice Cosima got him on his feet and led him to a room at the back.

The music no longer bothered him — it was part of the ocean’s rhythm — the ocean he was skimming above — the ocean he was skimming beneath — the ocean he was skimming through — the ocean that was inside him. ( _…Above, beneath, through, inside…_ ) The jerking, pulsating, sweating bodies around him no longer bothered him— they were flowers in deep-sea gardens of colour, perfume and movement. ( _…Above, beneath, through, inside…_ ) Strange brilliant blossoms drifted out of the darkness and burst pleasingly on the surface of his skin, like the sweetest and cleanest of rain.

_…Above, beneath, through, inside. Above, beneath, through, inside. Above, beneath, through, inside…_

In the Black Tulip Club Reid was lying on a low leather sofa, his head cradled in Cosima’s lap, his eyes half-closed, murmuring, rapidly and ecstatically, in a language that he could only access when he was high. He thought — he was almost sure — that he was close to the point where language and mathematics merged, that what he was speaking was the Universe’s own language. Now all he had to do was understand it.

It was 10.32 p.m Eastern Standard Time.

...............

In a perfectly unremarkable shed in the depths of rural Virginia, some 60 miles from Baltimore, Hannibal Lecter was murdering a forty-two-year-old Washington Post journalist, called Edward Svanqvist. Dr Lecter had nothing particularly against Edward Svanqvist — indeed on the two previous occasions when they had met Dr Lecter had thought him pleasant and intelligent. But Edward Svanqvist had skin of a particular whiteness and freshness and Dr Lecter had a great desire to transform a human body into something resembling a bouquet of roses. A man should always follow the Dictates and Inclinations of His Art. Dr Lecter had often told his friends and acolytes this.

He had determined that the way to achieve the particular effect he sought was to peel off strips of white, perfect skin, being careful to leave them attached to the body. The majority of the strips should be between an inch and two inches wide. These should then be carefully curled into spirals and coaxed into rose shapes (not unlike the tomato roses with which he — an avid culinarian — sometimes decorated salads and meat dishes). He wanted a gathering of roses at the centre of Edward Svanquist’s chest, a gathering of smaller roses (rosebuds in fact) at the inside of each elbow and maybe another gathering around his groin. If he skinned the face he might even be able to achieve a crown of roses on the brow. Ever the perfectionist, Dr Lecter had a particular variety of rose in mind which he wished to imitate: it was called Ferdinand Pichard — a bourbon shrub first bred in France in 1921, with white petals striped and splashed with red. (Dr Lecter made a mental note not to get distracted by the cultivation of roses. He already had two demanding hobbies — Cooking and Death; he had no room for a third.)

If the piece went well then Dr Lecter had already chosen the field where he would display it for the edification of his friends at the FBI. If the piece went poorly, then there was, next to the shed, a dark expanse of greasy, unpleasing water that had swallowed up a number of corpses that had not met Dr Lecter’s exacting standards. It was important at this stage to keep the subject alive or the skin-roses would wither too soon. From time to time Dr Lecter administered water, salts, adrenaline and flunitrazepam as the subject appeared to require. The subject, who had screamed and pleaded for the first three hours, had grown quieter as higher brain functions died.

In an anonymous shed by a mournful, nameless lake the almost-late Edward Svanqvist was murmuring, rapidly and ecstatically, in a language that is only spoken by babies in their pre-linguistic stage of development and by dying men when all other language has flown.

It was 10.32 p.m Eastern Standard Time.

...............

It was Friday evening. All across America people were pursuing their usual humdrum activities.


	2. Ways to cook Reid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Morgan is puzzled and Dr Reid attracts someone's attention.

Morgan was at a conference on forensic psychology. In a break between seminars he had got stuck talking to one of the psychiatrists from the previous panel. The man had done some work for the FBI. He was well thought of. But today he'd said some pretty out-there things about competency and insanity pleas. It wasn't clear how much of it he actually believed or to what extent he was simply being controversial.

They'd been talking a while, neither of them very engaged with the conversation; Morgan asked a question about competency evals. The psychiatrist didn't reply, his attention caught by something else. Morgan followed his gaze and saw Reid sitting alone in the middle of the banked seating of the lecture theatre. When everyone else had got up to talk and get a coffee, Reid had stayed put. Reid seemed to have brought about a dozen books to the conference, presumably so he wouldn't have to do any socialising. He'd made a sort of barricade of the books, and now he sat behind it reading, one long hand twisting furiously in his long hair, one foot jiggling.

This, Morgan realised suddenly and with a sort of pang, was what Reid looked like to other people. Odd. Isolated. A little bit manic. Perhaps more than a little bit. Morgan sighed and repeated his question to the psychiatrist. He could have cared less about the answer, but suddenly he just wanted to get the guy's attention off Reid.

"I beg your pardon," said the psychiatrist gravely. "I was thinking about…" For a moment his eyes seemed in danger of drifting back to Reid, but then he stopped himself. "I was thinking about barding."

"Barding," said Morgan. "Is that a psychological term? I don't…" 

The psychiatrist smiled. "No, no, no. It is the process whereby one wraps lean meat in something fatty in order to cook it. I am a cook. It is my hobby." He had a marked European accent. Not British. Something Morgan couldn't identify.

"A hobby?" said Morgan, wishing he could remember the guy's name. Lassiter? Lockerbie? Something like that.

"Yes. I do not believe that the occupations of one's leisure hours should be pursued with any less passion than the career for which one receives financial recompense. 'If a man has a hobby he follows it up, whatever his other pursuits.' That is a quote from Conan Doyle's 'The Illustrious Client'. The Sherlock Holmes story about the serial killer. The serial killer with a hobby."

"Uh huh."

The psychiatrist was dressed in a three-piece suit of a striking brown Prince-of-Wales check. His shirt was of a colour poised perfectly between sky blue and lavender. His copper-coloured tie was wide and bright and shiny and paisley. His bronze silk handkerchief was arranged in his breast-pocket just so. The whole effect was dandified to an extreme and Morgan, who felt he would rather have been tortured by thirteen unsubs than wear such a suit, would have expected it to be emasculating. But oddly it was just the reverse: the clothes emphasised the man's masculinity - that and a weird sense of stillness that emanated from him.

"But to return to barding…" said the man.

_Oh, do we have to?_

"…it is a technique for roasting the most delicate cuts. Meat of exquisite flavour. Meat of an incomparable texture. Meat without a speck of fat upon it. Lean. Perfect. This is the problem that is before me. How do you preserve the tenderness during the cooking process when there is no fat upon the flesh whatsoever?"

"Er…" said Morgan.

"Conversely," continued the psychiatrist, "if you add fat from another source - pig fat or something similar - how do you prevent the intense savouriness of the fatty substance from overwhelming the more delicate meat? Of course I make my own hams and bacons which are superior to what is available commercially, but even so. There are other techniques. Braising - which adds liquid, but usually the cook would add vegetables with the liquid and I am not inclined to risk sullying the flavour with vegetables." The thought seemed to displease him. He wrinkled his nose and swept a sudden, sour glance across the multitude of chattering FBI agents, psychiatrists, psychologists and academics. "Vegetables," he muttered, apparently at random.

Morgan made a bit of an effort to get into the swing of things. "What about preparing it raw? I mean if it's as tender as you say. Like a carpaccio?"

The psychiatrist was suddenly all good humour again. "An excellent suggestion." He considered Morgan thoughtfully. "You have done this before?"

"No. Not really," said Morgan, not entirely sure what they were talking about. He seized on one of the few parts of the conversation he had actually followed. "You know you should really talk to Reid about Sherlock Holmes. He's a Holmes nut." He glanced at Reid. "He likes people who can quote Holmes."

A moment of silence. Then the psychiatrist turned and, following where Morgan's glance had rested, regarded the skinny, hunched-over figure with the jiggling foot. "That is his name? The man with the face of a Botticelli angel? Reid?"

"Uh…" said Morgan, taking a moment to process this. _A Botticelli angel. Seriously? A freaked-out, statistic-spouting, over-caffeinated, Nietzsche-quoting, sleep-deprived Botticelli angel with wildly misfiring social skills, mismatched socks and an intermittent narcotics addiction? That sort of Botticelli angel? OK. Sure. Whatever._ "Yeah," he said, "That's Dr Reid."

The psychiatrist smiled. It was odd the way his dark eyes darkened even more when he smiled. (It was odd the way the whole lecture theatre seemed to darken when he smiled.) He said, "I would gladly speak to Dr Reid now, but I see that he is a man who values privacy - as do I. It seems that he and I will share more than a love of literature. I have enjoyed our conversation so much. Please tell Dr Reid that Dr Lecter is looking forward to meeting him."

Then, with a little half-bow, he moved off to a group of scientific colleagues who seemed delighted to see him.

OK, thought Morgan. One seriously weird dude. Still, he reflected, Reid would probably like him. What with Sherlock Holmes and all.


	3. Recently Morgan had realised something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes Reid is a pain. Sometimes Morgan knows it.

Recently Morgan had realised something.

The BAU team had been in Los Angeles. Someone - probably Hotch - had begun to suspect that the person they were looking for might be a taxi driver. Certain pieces of evidence seemed to point that way. Hotch had said something like, "Cabs have GPS right?"

Over the speakerphone Garcia had declared that cabs were "…tracked more than Gaga's twitter!"

"What does that mean?" Reid had demanded. He'd sounded almost panicked about it, as if he thought the whole case might be getting away from him simply because he'd missed one of Garcia's mad pop-culture references.

It had made them all smile. In the middle of three miserable days when women's ruined bodies kept turning up all over LA, they'd had this one little moment when they'd relaxed. One little moment of innocence, of familiar silliness. Of Reid being Reid, not getting stuff.

But, when the case was done, while they were at the airport waiting for the flight to be called, Morgan started to think about it. And after he'd thought enough he sat and stared at Reid who was sitting opposite him.

"What?" said Reid, grumpily. He didn't look up. He appeared to be reading two books at once - one of them in Vietnamese.

"Last week you read a magazine in Spanish," said Morgan.

"A journal of cultural studies. In Portuguese."

"An article about Judas…? Something…?"

" _Anormais, unicórnios e Judas: significantes da liminar e subliminar na música pop moderno_ ," said Reid, speaking Portuguese while reading Vietnamese while eating chocolate.

"Translation?"

"Freaks, Unicorns and Judases: signifiers of the liminal and subliminal in modern pop music." Reid looked up. "It's online. Do you want me to send you the link?"

Sending people links was Reid's new favourite thing.

"No, I'm good. Tell me, does 'Lady Gaga' mean something different in Portuguese than it does in English?"

"Ummmmmmm…" Reid's eyes were amused and his mouth compressed into a tiny, impish smile.

"Because I may not read Portuguese but anyone could see that article was stuffed with references to her. Her name was on every other line. Admit it, Reid, you know perfectly well who Gaga is."

Reid assumed a vague expression. Then a vaguely confused expression. Then he tried looking vaguely fragile and tragic and Reid-ish. He glanced at Morgan and saw it wasn't working. So he shrugged off all the vagueness, rubbed his nose viciously and said, "I can't tell jokes."

"What?"

"You can tell jokes. Garcia can tell jokes. Even Hotch tells jokes. But me… I can reduce whole roomfuls of people to appalled silence with one joke."

Morgan laughed. "That's funny."

"Wasn't meant to be. When I tell jokes people get more depressed, not less."

Morgan was still laughing.

"It's true," protested Reid.

"Hey, no argument from me."

"But jokes are good. Physiologically laughter has many benefits." Reid meandered on for a while about subcortical neuronal groups and studies on heart disease among comedians. Morgan wondered if he was still being funny, but decided he'd just gone back to being Reid.

"OK," said Morgan. "But what has any of this got to do with Lady Gaga?"

"I explained that."

"You really didn't."

"I can't tell jokes, but I can be a joke. You all like it when I don't get your cultural references. You think it's funny. You think it's cute."

"It is cute," agreed Morgan. "Though it's getting distinctly less cute now I know you're lying."

"I'm not lying," argued Reid. "I'm just… playing into the fantasy. I mean who doesn't know who Lady Gaga is? Give me some credit. I can read the covers of magazines at the checkout same as anybody. I'm making a ridiculous version of the truth. And that's all a joke is, isn't it? Like when Hotch asked if I'd joined a boy-band because I'd got my hair cut. Nobody thought I'd really joined a boy-band. Because that would be ridiculous."

Morgan snorted. He was not satisfied with Reid's explanation, but decided he was too tired to have a full-on argument about it.

There was silence for a while. Reid went back to Reid-world and Morgan leafed disconsolately through tracks on his mp3 player, Somewhere on this thing he must have something he wanted to listen to.

"What _is_ a boy-band?" asked Reid innocently.

"I'm warning you, Reid."

Reid sniggered.

Recently Morgan had realised something: Reid lied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't speak, read or write Portuguese. So the tiny amount of Portuguese that Reid speaks was got from an internet translation thingy and is probably hideous. I apologise on the translation thingy's behalf. If anyone would like to correct it I would be ever so grateful.


	4. Reid had been planning on having this spontaneous thought for about a week

Reid sometimes made awkward, unfunny jokes about the fact that he had very few friends. But the truth was he actually seemed to prefer it that way. Outside work his social circle was small and he had never shown much interest in extending it. As far as anyone could tell it consisted of:

• some guy in St Petersburg who was a recluse 

• a mathematics professor in Reykavik 

• a slightly mysterious person named Cosima Nyström. (She and Reid called each other _a lot_. J.J., Garcia and Prentiss still had hopes that she would turn out to be a girlfriend, though Morgan kept insisting that none of these phone calls, viewed from the other side of an office or a parking lot or an airport lounge, looked like the sort of phone calls you had with your girlfriend)

• a couple of people with whom Reid had played chess for years, but whose gender remained indeterminate. (Morgan said Reid probably just hadn’t noticed what sex they were yet)

So when Hannibal Lecter cornered Reid in a corridor in Quantico, introduced himself and asked Reid to dinner, Reid had no intention of accepting the invitation. 

Going all vague and fragile — Reid’s usual defence against people he didn’t want to talk to — had no effect whatsoever on Dr Lecter. He was a psychiatrist and therefore completely unfazed by social inadequacies, coping strategies and personality disorders. He simply waited politely for Reid to become unvague again.

So Reid tried a more direct approach. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m already doing something that weekend.”

Dr Lecter nodded. Nothing was more likely than that other people should be clamouring for Dr Reid’s company and that Dr Lecter would have to get in line to enjoy it. “Of course,” he said. “Tell me which Saturday or Sunday suits you best.”

“Out of what?” said Reid, frowning. He needed to know what subset of Saturdays and Sundays they were talking about.

“Out of any Saturday or Sunday.”

“Any Saturday and Sunday ever? The infinite number of Saturdays and Sundays?” said Reid, growing alarmed.

“Precisely,” said Dr Lecter.

Reid was momentarily taken aback. He couldn’t claim to be infinitely busy on an infinite number of Saturdays and Sundays. Could he? He switched tactics for a third time. “Look,” he said, “I’d really rather you didn’t tell anyone this, but I kinda have to avoid dinner parties. They mess with my Asperger’s. Sorry.” 

Dr Lecter put his head to one side and observed Reid narrowly. He smiled. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely as if Dr Reid’s society was already proving more thrilling than he’d dared hope. “Dr Reid,” he said quietly. “I promise you I shall not tell a soul, but we both know that you don’t have Asperger’s Syndrome. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder perhaps. But I doubt that it is anything other than a very mild case. Shall we say the Saturday after next?”

“Ummm…” said Reid, temporarily out of strategies.

“Excellent!” said Dr Lecter. “I will email you directions.”

And Dr Lecter walked away, leaving Reid looking decidedly ambushed.

In the intervening week and a half Dr Lecter emailed Reid a couple of time to tell him how the dinner-party was shaping up. He seemed to suppose that Reid was anxiously awaiting news of it. Apparently Dr Lecter had vast numbers of friends all of whom were simply longing to come to his house for dinner and who would callously drop any previous engagement the instant an invitation from Hannibal hove into view. There would be, said Dr Lecter:

• a photographer who specialised in documenting drug addicts

• a cellist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

• a post-doctoral researcher at JHU who was preparing a new translation of Proust

• a physicist who worked with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva

• a television director from the UK who had directed three episodes of Dr Who

Dr Lecter assured Reid that all these people were eager to meet him and ask him about himself.

“Damn, Reid,” said Morgan. “This guy’s really got in for you.”

“Shut up,” said Reid in the depths of gloom.

“Did you try telling him you have bubonic plague?”

“Shut up.”

“I bet he’d let you off if you said you had bubonic plague.”

“Shut-up-Shut-up-Shut-up.”

Morgan sat, sniggering to himself.

“Hey,” said Reid.

“Hey yourself,” said Morgan.

“You could come too,” said Reid. He made it sound as if it was something that had just occurred to him, though Morgan knew perfectly well that Reid had been planning on having this spontaneous thought for about a week.

“He didn’t invite me,” said Morgan.

“I can call him and tell him you’re coming.”

“You can’t just invite a person to someone else’s dinner-party. Lecter’s a serious cook. People like that plan everything. They buy ingredients in specific amounts and have exact numbers of matching plates and shit.”

“He told me to bring someone. I’m bringing you.”

“What if I’m busy?”

“You’re not. I checked your planner.”

“What if I don’t want to go?”

Reid scowled. “I don’t want to go either.”

Morgan didn’t reply straightaway. Something about the way Dr Lecter had suddenly fixated on Reid at the conference still niggled at him and he had actually always intended to accompany Reid. There was, however, no need for Reid to know this. Morgan let the silence (and Reid’s suspense) drag out for a while. Then, “OK,” he said at last. “In any case, it might not be so bad. Hotch knows someone who knows someone who had dinner at Lecter’s house. Apparently the food was amazing.”

“Who cares? I’m not interested in food,” grumbled Reid. “I won’t know what I’m eating anyway. I have a terrible palate.”


	5. Aaron Hotchner and Jack Crawford drink scotch together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What it says in the title.

Aaron Hotchner was walking purposefully through a labyrinth of echoing glass corridors in Quantico. It was Friday, seven o’clock and hardly anybody was about. His little son was spending the weekend with his grandparents, which meant that he had no pressing reason to go home. A drink, he had decided, would be nice. A drink and someone to talk to. He was walking purposefully to disguise the fact that he had no purpose whatsoever — other than the vague hope of stumbling across someone equally in need of a drink. He was concentrating on not looking like a single-parent, workaholic loser with no discernible social life. 

If you circled down from Hotch’s office on the fourth floor and kept going then sooner or later you ended up at Jack Crawford’s office in the basement. And Hotch was really hoping that Jack Crawford was in his office or Hotch’s credentials to workaholic loserhood would be established beyond all doubt. Hotch arrived at a glass-walled office where a tawny-skinned man was standing, reading reports. He was a tall man, though not remarkably so. Nevertheless with his powerful shoulders and heavy head he seemed to fill all the available space, as if he could blot out suns and constellations, as if he would cast a disastrous shadow over any landscape he entered. A handsome Minotaur in a perfect suit. A Minotaur with greying hair and a pitted, brown hide. Jack Crawford.

Crawford looked up from his desk, stared for a moment. “Scotch,” he said. It was more of a statement than a question. Hotch sank into a chair with a curt, frowning nod.

Frowningly Crawford poured two scotches and then frowningly passed Hotch one of them.

Hotch frowned and took it.

Then suddenly, at the exact same moment, they both started laughing. It was hard to say at what. At themselves. At what the FBI had made them become. At the ridiculous way both of them so desperately needed a drink. At the whole damn, murderous week. 

Aaron Hotchner and Jack Crawford liked each other. They were enough alike that it was easy to respect the other man; both were ambitious but both despised the backstabbing and jockeying for position which often went along with ambition at the FBI; most importantly each believed himself aware of the other’s weaknesses, resulting in a small but pleasant feeling of superiority. In Hotch’s eyes Jack Crawford drove his people too hard; while Hotch - in Jack Crawford’s view - had an unfortunate tendency to become sentimental about his team members. (Plus there was that weird obsession with Dr Reid which all of Hotch's team seemed to have and which was, in Jack Crawford’s opinion, well... just _weird_.)

They talked for a while about Hotch's son and Crawford's wife, before getting down to the serious business of exchanging scandal about the higher-ups at the FBI. (Both men would have said, if asked, that they never gossiped; moreover that they had nothing but contempt for gossip and vigorously discouraged it in their staff; and that what they were doing now was the free exchange of factual information which they both needed. Which was different from gossip. Oddly enough both men believed this absolutely to be true.)

Around about the third scotch they drifted into the conference room next to Crawford's office (taking the bottle with them) and began examining the photographs displayed there. One of the most striking was a naked female body in an attic room full of antler horns. The body was hung upon the horns, her flesh pierced by them. The deep shadows of the attic emphasised the body’s pallor. She looked less like a young woman and more like a white, soft, deepsea creature, crucified on coral.

“This is the Chesapeake Ripper’s work?” asked Hotch.

“We thought so originally," said Crawford. "But no. Will Graham killed her. She was his first - we think she was his first - when he started emulating the Ripper.”

"And you're sure Graham wasn't the Ripper to begin with?" asked Hotch.

"Yes. Alana Bloom and Hannibal Lecter were in absolute agreement about that. Which was kind of a first. And there's this. Found two weeks ago. Well, obviously we know where Will Graham was two weeks ago."

Crawford indicated a photograph of the body that had appeared one morning in a field in Virginia. The body that had been made to resemble a bouquet of roses. Hotch had heard about it. He just hadn't seen it yet.

Hotch stared at it a long moment. "And you think this one’s the Ripper?”

“I do. The bloody roses are very much the sort thing we expect from the Chesapeake Ripper. That sort of depraved artistry. Plus he took something. A surgical trophy.”

“What?”

“The liver.”


	6. A dark, starlit King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morgan and Reid have dinner with Dr Lecter.

On the following evening Morgan and Reid attended the dinner party at Hannibal Lecter's house in Baltimore.

The guests congregated in the dining-room. A dinner given by Hannibal was clearly an occasion and his friends had dressed appropriately. The cellist from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra wore a dress of stencilled bronze silk and a strange necklace of dark metal like bones and claws slotted together. The translator of Proust was stunning in an emerald satin cocktail dress and earrings of snowflake obsidian. The physicist was wearing a Tom Ford suit of moss-coloured velvet. Morgan was fairly sure that he could wear a suit as well as anyone, but in Hannibal Lecter’s house he was on the verge of feeling underdressed. Reid on the other hand was wearing the same blue cardigan he’d worn all week — a cardigan that was unravelling at one wrist — and he didn’t appear to have remembered to comb his hair for several days, but he was more at ease than Morgan had seen him in months. He talked to the translator of Proust about Proust, he talked to the cellist about Mozart, he talked to the physicist about the best places to see the Aurora Borealis, and only became Reidishly incomprehensible when he started explaining to the UK television director how he thought it was that the Doctor's TARDIS was bigger on the inside than the outside. “Of course the physics for this doesn’t actually exist yet,” said Reid. “But the mathematics that underpins it does. Well,” he conceded, “some of it does. About 30%. And I’ve done some more of it. In my head. I just haven’t got round to writing it down yet.”

Reid didn’t usually have conversations. Sometimes he broadcast whatever was going on in his mind at people who hadn’t been able to get out of the way quickly enough, but in Hannibal Lecter's dining-room there were actual exchanges of ideas going on. Hannibal had spoken nothing but the truth when he said he would gather together a group of people that Reid would enjoy meeting. It had taken Morgan months to understand the fragile bundle of genius and neuroses that was Reid. Hannibal Lecter seemed to have got there in ten seconds flat. Morgan wasn't sure how he felt about this.

Dinner commenced.

The table was decorated with four vases filled with old-fashioned roses with round, heavy blooms. They were all one variety, pale-petalled, splashed and stained with dark crimson. Hannibal said the name of this rose was Ferdinand Pichard. The guests were presented with plates of white fleshy scallops skewered on pale, stripped rosemary twigs and served with a mango foam. The dish was paired with a dry white wine, so mineral in flavour that it had a faint suggestion of saltiness. It was as if you could taste the ocean that the scallops had lived in, while the mangoes seemed to place the ocean in the Tropics. Whole seascapes were conjured up in Morgan's mind as he ate. He was slightly stunned. He hadn't known food could do this.

They passed on to the next course. 

“This is…?” asked Morgan.

“Foie de veau en crépinettes,” said Hannibal. “Liver in a forcemeat casing.”

“Sounds better in French,” remarked Morgan.

“Things often do.”

Morgan tasted it. “It’s delicious. Actually I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.”

Hannibal bowed his head.

At the other end of the table the cellist was speaking of her teacher, a woman to whom she owed her skill, her artistry, her career, and who had recently died. “A musician is never just herself," said the cellist. "Never just one person. Some part of her mind - her soul if you will - is always possessed by her mentor or mentors."

"It's the same for all artists," said the TV director. "Who was the person who formed your mind, Dr Reid?”

Reid frowned. He didn't answer straightaway.

“Jason Gideon,” suggested Morgan, interested.

“No, not Gideon,” said Reid.

_Reid thought of his mother dragging him from his bed in the middle of the night when he was nine years old, because there was a man made of stars in the sky. A King, a God had come and was standing in the sky looking down at their house; and Diana knew that he’d come for Spencer. Barefoot and in their nightclothes, they’d run outside. A man made of stars was standing in the sky directly above Las Vegas. It’s just Orion, mom, nine-year-old Spencer had said. It’s just stars. There’s Betelgeuse and Rigel and Saiph and Bellatrix. Please, mom! He’d told her the name of every star in the constellation of Orion, but it hadn’t made any difference. She hadn’t listened. She’d screamed out that she would kill Spencer rather than let him be taken away from her. She would kill him with her own hands to keep him from the dark, starlit King._

_And the neighbours were calling the police and the police were asking Spencer if his mom had threatened to kill him like some of the neighbours said. And Spencer had told them no. She’d never said that._

_But it wasn’t his mother threatening to kill him that had made him cry and tremble. (He was used to that.) It was what he had seen. Not Betelgeuse. Not Rigel. Not Saiph. Not Bellatrix. A King made of stars, galaxies tall, standing over their house and looking down at him. He had seen exactly what his mother had told him was there._

“Dr Reid?" prompted the cellist.

“I’d have to say Professor Arminski who supervised my mathematics PhD,” said Reid. “Ronald Arminski.” He glanced nervously at Hannibal Lecter. ( _Dr Reid, I promise you I shall not tell a soul, but we both know that…_ )

"And who are your forerunners, Hannibal?" asked the translator of Proust.

"As what?" smiled Hannibal. "I am so many things. A psychiatrist. A surgeon. A cook. A..."

"A cook!" declared the physicist. "That is the only part of you that interests us just now!"

"Is cooking an art or a craft?" wondered Morgan.

"Oh, an art. An art!" said the translator of Proust reverently. "At least it is the way Hannibal does it."

"It is both I think," said Hannibal. “One begins with a tradition. A tradition of excellence. One copies, as exactly as one can, the work of past masters, of Ali Bab, Julia Child, Escoffier.”

“So cooking is the craft, but the dinner-party is the art?” said Reid.

“Precisely,” said Hannibal.

“I don’t get it,” said Morgan.

“The dinner-party is the unique occurrence, the unrepeatable, creative experience which the cook arranges for the guests to have,” said Reid with a puzzled frown as if wondering why he was having to explain something so obvious.

“And if the cook does his work well,” added Hannibal, “then the dinner-party is not only enjoyable, it is mildly transformative - as art should be. The guests leave and they are not quite who they were when they arrived.”

“And how do you expect us to be transformed this evening?” asked the photographer.

“You all be slightly more Swedish,” said Hannibal with mock solemnity.


	7. Saturday afternoon at Chibi Bull Bull

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A visit home. How nice.

Reid was having a terrible weekend. He was in a fast-food restaurant in Las Vegas called Chibi Bull Bull, trying not to get arrested. 

Several members of staff, including the manager of Chibi Bull Bull, were staring at him with great hostility. Customers and their children were doing the same. A black police officer had hold of him by a screwed-up handful of his shirt. A white police officer was standing, hands on hips, glaring at him.

The only person in the vicinity who wasn't currently regarding Reid with loathing was a tall, good-looking woman in her fifties. She was remarkable for two things: the quiet dignity with which she wore the uniform of Chibi Bull Bull employees (for females a searing orange dress with brown frilly apron and orange-and-brown frilly cap); and the serenity with which she was regarding the proceedings.

"Ma'am," the black police officer said. "Is this man your son?" He gave Reid a bit of a push.

The tall woman smiled at the police officers. Her gaze came slowly round to Reid and she looked at him as if from a long way away. "Yes," she said at last.

A pretty Latina girl, also in a Chibi Bull Bull uniform, took hold of the tall woman's hand and squeezed it sympathetically.

"And why is your son trying to get you fired, ma'am?" asked the white police officer.

"He's troubled," said Reid’s mother with an air of calm humility.

Reid spluttered. "Me! Me! _I'm_ troubled? I'll have you know…"

"Did anyone say you could speak?" yelled the black officer in Reid's ear. "Did they?"

"It's not the first job he's tried to get me fired from," said Reid’s mother, sadly.

"People don't believe his bullshit, do they?" asked the manager of Chibi Bull Bull. Immediately regretting his choice of words, he glanced shamefaced at Reid’s mother. "Sorry, Diana."

"Sometimes they do," admitted Reid’s mother. "I've lost several jobs because of him. People don't want to employ a woman with a son that's…" She grimaced slightly.

"…troubled?" offered the manager of Chibi Bull Bull.

"…self-centred and mean," said the pretty Latina girl.

"…a pain in the ass," said the white police officer.

"Look, my point is…" began Reid.

"And what did we agree about your point?" asked the black officer.

Reid looked at him. “That I wasn't going to keep on making it?"

"There you go."

"Fine,” said Reid.

"You're taking this very well, ma'am," said the white officer to Reid's mother.

Reid's mother smiled gently.

Reid rolled his eyes. “You'd be taking things well if you were on the amount of tranquilisers she's on.”

“Talking of which,” said the black officer to Reid, "maybe you'd like to come down to the station and take a little drugs test for us?"

Reid paused and considered. It was Saturday. Probably not the best day for a drugs test. “Shutting up now," he said.

"Good idea," said the black officer, patting his shoulder.

"Would you like us to arrest him, ma'am?" asked the white officer. "Get him off your hands for a while? Give you a little break? We can do that, you know."

"I don't _live_ with her!" protested Reid. "I work for the FBI. In Quantico." 

"He often says that," said his mother. "It's fine. I’ll manage.”

"As long as you're sure, ma'am," said the white officer. “You can call us any time he gets too much for you to handle. Here's my card." He turned to Reid. "Now listen, Mr Reid. We don't want to hear of you making any more trouble for this nice lady. We'll be by later. You mustn't be here when we do. You let your mom do her job. OK?"

"OK, but it's Dr Reid," said Reid, massaging his aching temples. "I'm a doctor."

"He often says that," said his mother.

Behind Reid the pretty Latina girl had started clearing tables and whispering to customers. "…such a lovely woman. A real lady, if you know what I mean. It's just awful what she has to put up with.”

Reid's mother came over to him. "Go and sit in my car, Spencer. And wait for me there."

"You don't have a car,” said Reid. “Mom, can I have my wallet back? And all the other stuff you stole?”

“Stole? Stole?” She seemed to be trying the word out as if it were new to her. “There’s your coat which I, _thoughtfully_ , put in an empty locker when you arrived so that nothing would get spilt on it. Is that what you want?”

“That and my iPad and my wallet and my ID. They’re all in my messenger bag…”

Reid’s mother faintly raised an eyebrow.

“What?” said Reid.

Reid’s mother looked at him and then pointedly at the police officers who weren’t quite out of the door yet.

_Oh, yeah, the messenger bag. The messenger bag which contained, among other things, several carefully secreted needles, just under a gram of heroin and 25 mg of oxycodone._ Reid pressed his lips together. _OK. Touché, mom._

“Fine,” he said. “Can I at least have some money? It’s raining out there.”

His mother brought him his coat and scarf and a handful of cash.

Reid went outside and across the parking lot. Las Vegas in December. On the other side of the street was a warm, pleasant-looking coffee shop. He bought a coffee and sat down to wait.

Reid had only ever managed to get one job in his entire life and even then the FBI had had to bend the rules to let him in. Eight years on some of his colleagues still made it clear that they didn’t think he belonged there. His mad mother, on the other hand, walked into one job after another. She exuded an air of competence. Of calm authority. People respected her immediately. She was fiercely intelligent, profoundly imaginative and she worked hard. She even worked hard at entry-level, minimum-wage jobs in the fast-food industry, when she should, by rights, have been the Head of the Comparative Literature Department at a major university. (But a lifetime of delusional behaviour and depression had put paid to that.) And she was helpful to her co-workers. Considerably too helpful in Reid’s opinion. Take the manager of Chibi Bull Bull for instance. He looked to be about nineteen and was clearly struggling with the responsibility of running the restaurant. Diana Reid had been at Chibi Bull Bull for less than three weeks and Reid would have bet that by now she was doing half his job for him, telling him what to say to the area manager, how to deal with sanitation and health officials, sorting out personnel issues for him. Soon he’d be completely reliant on her. By the time she started telling him about the demons in charge of Chibi Bull Bull or the poison in the food or the fact that some of the customers were aliens, he’d be in too deep to fire her. Then she’d do something — something unbelievably insane and almost certainly illegal — and the area office would get involved. Or the police. Probably both. It would cost the manager his job and maybe some of the other staff too. Reid could see the whole tragedy of Chibi Bull Bull laid out in front of him as if it had already happened. Mostly because it had already happened, just not at this particular restaurant. There was a reason Reid got on a plane every time he discovered that his mother had got a job in the fast-food industry.

He stayed in the coffee shop musing on these matters. After a while the black police officer and the white police officer dropped by. The white police officer said hi to the manager and nodded in Reid’s direction. “He behaving himself?”

She considered the question. “He keeps muttering a lot and swearing and trying to pull his hair out. Other than that he’s OK.”

The white officer nodded as if this was pretty much as he’d expected. He handed the woman his card. “Call me if he looks like he’s going to be any trouble. We’re not far away.”

Reid gave a sigh and went and sat outside on a wall. In the rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the following one were previously posted as a stand-alone piece. (Kind of stand-alone.) But this is where they belong.  
> I checked Wikipedia and flickr and it seems like winter in Las Vegas can be rainy and a little chilly. But if this strikes anyone as odd, let me know.


	8. Are the angels doing anything?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reid and Diana talking.

At quarter past seven Diana Reid, now in street clothes, walked across the parking lot to where her son sat, arms crossed, hunched in the rain.

“Hi mom,” said Reid. “Good day at work?”

Detecting a certain sarcastic bent to the question, Diana declined to answer. She handed him his messenger bag and they walked in silence to the bus stop.

When they got to the bus stop she said, “Spencer, it’s not nice to get your mother fired. Try to remember that.”

“OK.”

An elderly black gentleman who was also waiting for a bus, looked up sharply. “You got your mother fired? What kinda sorry excuse for a son, are you?” 

“Oh God,” said Reid.

Diana smiled graciously at the elderly black gentleman. “He didn’t get me fired from my current job. Just the three previous ones,” she explained. “Unfortunately he’s very unhappy in his own life. He has no boyfriend and hardly any friends. It makes it hard for him to see me loved and accepted.”

“Oh God,” said Reid.

“He’s dripping on me,” observed the elderly black gentleman with distaste.

“He just spent two hours sitting the rain,” explained Diana.

The elderly black gentleman rolled his eyes sympathetically. “I see you got your work cut out for you there.”

The bus arrived. The elderly black gentleman told Diana to take care now. She thanked him. Then Diana and Reid got on the bus and sailed into the windy darkness and the sloppy smears of lights that were a rainy Las Vegas night.

“Remember Mina’s Fries and Pies, mom?” said Reid. “Remember when you found out the pies had no nutritional value? So you stole two hundred and forty-eight dollars from the till and bought fruit and vegetables, and gave them to the customers? Remember Poodle Noodles? When you told the staff they were being exploited and got them to unionise? And then you told the customers they were being exploited too and got them to protest at Poodle Noodles Regional Headquarters? Some of those people are still in jail. One’s awaiting trial on terrorism charges.”

“It’ll be better this time. I have a plan.”

“Oh God,” said Reid. “Look, mom, I want you to work. I really do. I just think you and the fast-food industry - it’s not a good mix. What about that library job you had? You liked that. Mr Yamaguchi was nice, wasn’t he?”

“Mr Yamaguchi harboured romantic intentions towards me,” frowned Diana. “I couldn’t allow that. My work is too important. The fast-food industry needs me. It’s where I’m meant to be. The angels agree with my assessment of the situation.”

“Oh God,” said Reid. He closed his eyes. Opened them again. “OK,” he said and took a breath. “What angels would these be exactly?”

"Oh, of course! I forgot. You don't believe in angels!” She shook her head at her own reflection in the black, rain-splattered window: she and her reflection sympathising with each other over the preposterousness of Reid.

"Mom, you don't believe in angels either. You’re an atheist.”

"I don't have to believe in them, Spencer. I can see them. It doesn't require belief when things are right in front of you. I could stop believing in what's right in front of my eyes, if that would suit you, but I suppose I’d have to stop believing in you too.”

_Oh yes, please, mom. Please stop believing in me. Please._

Out loud he said, “Are they here now? The angels?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Well, I don’t know,” he protested irritably.

"I mostly talk to them at the mall. The Miracle Mile and Paris both have those beautiful painted ceilings that look like the sky. I think it's the painted skies that attract them."

"I would have thought they’d prefer the real sky to painted skies," said Reid.

"Well, of course they do like real skies. And I do see them outside. But they’re very high up then. Several hundred feet I should think. It’s hard to get their attention.”

“Oh,” said Reid.

“They’re passionately fond of children and there are always a lot of children in malls.”

"Are they doing anything?" said Reid.

"Who? The children?"

"No, the angels."

"Now?"

"In general."

"What do you mean?"

"When you see the angels. Are they doing anything?"

"Hovering. Singing. Being glorious. Delivering messages of universal love and joy. Why? What do you expect angels to do?"

"Me? Nothing,” said Reid. “Who are the messages from?”

“What’s that?” said Diana.

“You said they’re delivering messages. The messages must be from someone. It can’t be God because, you know, there’s the whole atheism thing.” He was rather pleased with this argument and waited to see how she would respond.

“The messages are from the Universe,” said Diana calmly. “From All That Is, and All That Was, and All That Will Be. Angels are outside of Time and Space. All Times and Places are equally present to them which makes some of the things they say a little difficult to follow, but it has wonderful benefits. They talk to Margery for me, and, through them, she can talk to me. I understand her book so much better now. I’ve had the most rewarding conversations with the angels about it.”

“That’s nice,” said Reid.

He wasn’t being sarcastic. It was nice. Margery Kempe was the fourteenth-century Englishwoman whose mystical autobiography had formed the subject of Diana Reid’s Phd thesis and whose long mental illness (which Margery had viewed in terms of demonic possession) mirrored Diana’s own. The thesis had never been presented, though it was, in Reid’s opinion, quite brilliant and utterly revolutionary in its exploration of the links between madness, creativity and understanding. Carl Jung would have adored it. 

“The angels think you should put more effort into getting a boyfriend,” said Diana.

“Oh, OK. Could you ask them to mind their own fucking business?” said Reid.

“Don’t be difficult, Spencer.”

The next day on the flight back to Washington Reid tried to work out whether he ought to be worried about his mother or not. She had a job where her co-workers adored her and called the police the moment her horrible, ungrateful son turned up. In her leisure hours flights of angels descended from painted skies to converse with her about fourteenth-century English literature and unionisation.

In many ways she was doing better than he was.

The last thing she’d said at the airport was, “Oh, I remember.”

“What do you remember, mom?” Reid had said.

“What the angels told me to tell you.”

“Yes, you already told me that. About a boyfriend. Not that anyone cares, but I’m not actually…”

“No, not that. There was something else. They’re always asking me about you. I’ve explained you’re not that interesting.”

“Oh, OK. Thanks.”

“It was about the man made of emptiness. They say they want to talk to you about him.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Reid had said.


	9. Reid climbs through a window

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reid climbs through a window and goes to sleep in an ill-advised place.

Reid was at a symposium on consciousness at Johns Hopkins. There were four speakers and nine (possibly ten and a half) fundamental errors in their arguments.

By far the best exposition of identity and consciousness that Reid knew of was an article written in 1968 by D. Kopnin, a developmental psychologist, and M. Obolensky, a Marxist philosopher. It was a key text for Reid: he often referred to it in his head, but it was not widely known. In fact there was a strong possibility that he was the only person in the entire world who had ever laid eyes on it. He'd come across it one freezing night in December 2011 in a book called _The Soviet Contribution to Idealism_ , but when he'd looked for the book the next day it was nowhere to be found. This might possibly have had something to do with the amount of drugs he’d been on at the time. He had no memory of ever owning, buying or borrowing a book called _The Soviet Contribution to Idealism_. Nor did it seem to exist in any catalogue or database. Nor could he find any trace of D. Kopnin, developmental psychologist, and M. Obolensky, Marxist philosopher - and he'd looked _everywhere_. Except Russia. (Perhaps he should go to Russia?)

He also had a slightly disturbing recollection of D. Kopnin, developmental psychologist, and M. Obolensky, Marxist philosopher, showing up at his apartment later that night in December 2011. Together they'd done more drugs and drunk vodka and danced about wildly. D. Kopnin had been a solemn man with a big moustache and an unnerving resemblance to Friedrich Nietzsche, and M. Obolensky had been a rather pretty miniature piebald horse… This was the sort of conundrum that his professors at Caltech hadn't really covered: what to do when you came across a brilliant set of philosophical ideas but couldn’t figure out if they were the work of a couple of obscure, mid-twentieth-century _apparatchiks_ or your own opiate-induced hallucination.

On leaving the symposium Reid automatically turned towards the library to check the JHU catalogue for D. Kopnin, developmental psychologist, and M. Obolensky, Marxist philosopher, but then, on a rare impulse, he decided to talk to an actual human being about the problem; he would go and see Hannibal Lecter who lived twenty minutes walk away from the Homewood campus. (Reid actually estimated the walk at 18.4 minutes, but he was practising "informalising" the way he referred to numbers, which, if he succeeded, would result in his alienating 17.49% fewer people in social and professional situations.)

Dr Lecter was not home. This threw Reid rather. A rare burst of spontaneity had marooned him in an empty street at winter’s dusk in an unfamiliar city. He stood fumbling at the buckle of his messenger bag.

There was a sound. Reid looked round. At the side of the house was a window that was open; the wind kept catching it and causing it to bang against the frame. The obsessive-compulsive part of Reid’s psychological make-up was made deeply uncomfortable by the open window. It was a window. And it was _open_. Suppose that someone - a murderer perhaps - crept into Dr Lecter's house? Dr Lecter, being a civilised, law-abiding soul, probably had not considered this possibility with sufficient seriousness. Reid could not call Dr Lecter about the open window because Dr Lecter did not have a cell. He could not call Baltimore PD about the open window because it was just an open window. He could not call Dr Lecter's relations about the open window because, from what he understood, they were:

a) European

b) dead. 

He could not call Dr Lecter's friends about the open window because he didn't know who they were - other than Will Graham who was currently serving a life sentence in Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and so probably wouldn't be a whole lot of help.

Reid climbed over a low wall to examine the window. Things were worse than he had thought. Right next to the window was a leafless bush-thing; it was attached to the wall by big metal staples that formed a perfect ladder up to the window. Not knowing what else to do, he climbed up. However there was no way of doing this without climbing _through_ the leafless bush-thing - which turned out to be a rose-bush. Within seconds his face and hands were a mass of long scratches, while his hair was snagged on numerous thorns and was being yanked painfully this way and that.

_Fuck!_

He tried to climb back down again. The rose-bush embraced him intimately, amorously.

"Oh, please," he snapped. "Just get off me, will you?"

Long, whippy branches full of thorns whipped him playfully.

“I did not consent to this relationship. This is a non-consensual relationship,” he said through gritted teeth. _Oh good, now I'm arguing with a rose-bush._ Even his insane mother had never argued with a rose-bush. For years she’d been convinced that Bob Dylan was living in their water-tank, but arguing with rose-bushes? No, that was something she'd never stooped to.

Going up seemed easier than going down. He grabbed the window and tried to close it, but the catch was oddly constructed. It seemed to have a surprising number of springs and levers attached to it and in the darkness - which was particularly profound here - he couldn’t really see what they were for. So he grasped the window frame and pulled himself shakily up on to it. The rose-bush released him reluctantly, giving him some vicious parting scratches and tearing out several locks of his hair (presumably as a memento of their time together). He sort of shuffled and belly-flopped his body across the window ledge until he unbalanced-on-purpose and tumbled into the room beyond. As he fell his arm struck something in the darkness. Then both his legs caught on what felt like a series of shelves. Things started falling on his head. Some of them were hard and had sharp edges and some were bounceable and so hit him more than once. When everything in the room had stopped hitting him he lay groaning on the floor and felt disappointed with himself and dissatisfied with the universe.

  1. It barely needed stating that Morgan would have gone through the window as 99.999999999% of men on the planet would wish to go through a window. Wham! Zoom! Take that, window!
  2. Hotch would have gone through the window with a sort of innate masculine elegance. In fact the window, in deference to Hotch's obvious authority, would probably have apologised quickly and folded itself out of his way.
  3. Prentiss would have gone through the window with strength, efficiency and speed - and also, Reid thought, very sexily; but it was possible that this thought might be Demeaning To Women, so Reid put it on his mental pile of Things To Obsess Over And Worry About Later.
  4. Rossi would have gone through the window… Reid paused. Actually Rossi probably wouldn't have gone through the window at all, because of potential snags to his jacket and potential scuffs to his shoes. Rossi would probably have ordered someone else - very likely Reid - to do it instead.
  5. Garcia didn't usually go through windows because she was a tech analyst, but were she ever to do so, she would do it colourfully, wittily and explosively.
  6. And J.J…. Reid couldn't really imagine J.J. going through a window, but he knew that if and when it happened it would be beautiful. And angelic. And blonde. And perfect.
  7. In fact the only person on Reid's team who would ever go through a window like the unholy offspring of a tangled, unstrung kite and a flailing, paralytic spider was Reid himself.



Reid sighed and wished for impossible things.

He picked himself up off the floor and found the light switch. From the objects on the floor — cans and jars and packets of dried goods — he concluded he was in a pantry. He went over to the window with the intention of fastening it, but it was already shut. Somehow, in coming through the window he had triggered some sort of locking mechanism. He could no more open it now than he’d been able to close it before. The thought occurred to him that if, for some reason, Dr Lecter had wanted a trap to catch a burglar, he couldn’t have constructed a more perfect one.

But that made no sense, so he dismissed the idea.

He turned his attention to the chaos he’d created in the pantry. There were so few items left on the shelves that it was hard to guess what Dr Lecter's system was. After thinking about it for a while Reid arranged the cans and jars and packets in alphabetical order according to American English. Then he changed his mind and alphabetised them in Lithuanian, since that was Hannibal Lecter's childhood language and it seemed reasonable to suppose that that was what he would use in his own personal pantry.

That done, Reid wondered what to do next. There was no sound from anywhere else in the house, no suggestion that Dr Lecter had come home.

He opened the door of the pantry and switched on the light. The next room contained exactly one piece of furniture: a bed. It was a nice bed, all made up with sheets and soft pillows and a plump quilt, but other than that there was nothing, no furniture, no carpet, and — what was stranger still, what was beyond strange — there were no windows and no doors other than the one he was standing in. The pantry and the bedroom connected with each other, but not with the rest of the house.

Which was impossible.

Reid walked carefully around the walls of the pantry and the strange empty room, but could find no clues as to what the fuck was going on. Of course it didn’t help that he was exhausted. Climbing into the pantry and alphabetising the contents (twice) had really taken it out of him. Not to mention the part where he’d been assaulted by a rose bush. That bed was tempting. He removed his Converses, turned off the light and felt his way to the bed. He lay down on top of the bedspread but under the quilt. The city of Baltimore seemed hushed and waiting. The quilt was as soft as snow. He fell asleep immediately and dreamt…

_…that his mother and an angel - some angel that his mother just happened to know - were discussing Reid. “I don’t like his shoes,” said the angel. Diana, who seemed inclined to defend him, said, “He can’t afford better ones. He’s spent all his money on…” - drugs, thought Reid, she’s going to say drugs - “…orphans in Africa,” said Diana. For God’s sake, mom! thought Reid, nobody’s going to believe that! In the dream the angel looked out of heaven to see if it was true that Reid was spending all his money on orphans in Africa; and Reid didn’t want the angel to know that his mother lied to make him seem a better person than he really was. It gave his heart an unfamiliar wrench to know that she would say something so sweet about him. But in the dream he couldn’t remember how you gave money to orphans in Africa. So he wandered about a bit. He came to a bleak, colourless street in an anonymous city - the sort of city you find in dreams which is more abstract lines and angles than actual buildings. There was a leafless tree. The angel hovered in the tree’s bare branches, waiting to see what Reid would do. There was a slot in the trunk of the tree like the slot in a letter box. So Reid put his hand inside, intending to place money there for the orphans in Africa, but when he brought his hand out it was covered in blood. He looked up at the angel. “Is this what you wanted me to see?” But just at that moment the angel moved its head sharply round because it had heard…_

…a sound. The merest of sounds — the sister to silence. A sound like silk drawn across polished wood or the barely perceptible workings of the most perfectly maintained machinery.

Reid opened his eyes.

The room had changed drastically. The wall opposite the bed was no longer there. Instead there was a tall window and a night sky pierced by stars. The constellations of Orion, Monoceros and Canis Minor shimmered in front of him. But there was an absence among the stars, a vast blackness in the shape of a man. It moved and Reid realised that the figure was actually in the room, not among the stars. The figure opened its arms and from its right hand protruded a further darkness — the shape of a long, thin knife — while the fingers of its left hand were splayed open, ready to grasp and pin an opponent. The universe glittered and sang, and the figure was a vast, black emptiness at the heart of it.

"Hello," said Reid conversationally.

The figure paused. Reid had the impression that it was thinking, trying to work out how it knew his voice. And then…

"Dr Reid." Hannibal Lecter's voice, completely calm, utterly civilised, barely surprised. "I did not think it would be you." His arms were still wide; his hands still frozen in exactly the same position.

“Yes, it’s me. I came in through a window in order to close it. And then you didn't come, so I fell asleep. In this bed. I wanted to talk to you about consciousness."

"Consciousness?" said Dr Lecter.

"Yes."

“You came through the window in the pantry?"

"Yes,” said Reid. “Did you know it was open?"

"I am aware that I occasionally leave it open. Accidentally of course."

"Of course. But it's very dangerous," pointed out Reid. “You can tell it’s open from the street. It’s just begging for someone with bad intentions to climb in. And then what would you do?"

"Well, as you see, I have a plan," said Dr Lecter. "A plan and a kitchen knife.” He paused and lowered his arms. “However it seems that the person who climbed in tonight had only the very best intentions. So I will revise my plan and offer you a glass of wine instead."

Dr Lecter switched on the light. Reid began putting his Converses back on.

“Oh-oh! I’m afraid that I’ve bled on your nice clean bed.” _Why does he have a bed in the pantry to begin with?_ “I got seriously molested by a rose-bush on the way in.”

Dr Lecter smiled. “This house has seen blood before.” Stepping closer, he took a surprisingly firm hold of Reid’s jaw with long, elegant fingers and moved Reid’s head from side to side, examining the scratches on face and neck. Then he took both Reid’s hands in his and turned them this way and that. “We must deal with this before we do anything else. No! No arguing, Dr Reid! I was a surgeon before I was a psychiatrist and in this house you are under my care.” 

In the large gleaming kitchen Hannibal Lecter - a ridiculously good-looking man when all was said and done - bent over Reid in order to bathe his cuts and bruises, and to gently rub salve on them; and Reid tried to pretend to himself that he didn’t find it erotic. He took calming breaths and hoped it wouldn’t occur to Dr Lecter to take his pulse. He made an effort to distract himself. “Did you… Did you have a pleasant evening?" _Social niceties, there you go._

"I did. Thank you. I went for a refreshing drive and it so happened that I met a fellow I knew slightly. His car had broken down on a lonely road in a place where he could not get a signal for his cellphone. It was a road hidden from sight amongst unfrequented woods, in the dark and the snowy wind, far from any help.”

"How awful. And how fortunate that you were there."

"Yes, wasn't it?"

“You weren’t really going to try to defend yourself from a home invader with a knife, were you? There’s all sorts of ways that could go wrong.”

“I expect you are right.”

“You need to be more careful,” said Reid solicitously.

Dr Lecter got up and led him to the spacious room that served as library, office and sitting room; Reid noticed once more how silent the house was — and how strange that was when you considered that it was so near to the centre of the city. 


	10. Oh, for God's sake, stop profiling yourself...

“And now a glass of wine,” said Hannibal.

"Yes, but…"

"But?"

Reid said, "You're an œnophile and I've been told I have an appalling palate. I wouldn't want you to waste good wine on me."

Hannibal put his head on one side to consider this. "How does a man so intelligent acquire an appalling palate?"

“When I was a child I had to get my own meals and my mom's meals. I have what you might call arrested gastronomic development."

Hannibal laughed.

Reid said, “No, really, It’s the sort of palate a ten-year-old has. I never found anyone to educate it."

“Now you have." Hannibal poured a rich, red wine into a perfect, gleaming glass and handed it to Reid. "This is a Spanish wine. Nothing too complex. A very joyful wine."

"Joyful is good."

"It is indeed."

They settled into Hannibal's wonderfully comfortable armchairs. Hannibal smiled at Reid.

Reid smiled back. The light struck fire in the depths his wine; the wine struck fire in the depths of his mind. He felt suddenly and unreasonably happy; utterly relaxed. _But then, you know_ , he thought, _the attention of older, intellectually brilliant men always does that to you. Handsome older men… OK, I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. “I never found anyone to educate it.” Christ, could you be any more transparent? Hello! Wounded Child Jungian Archetype over here! Oh, for God's sake, stop profiling yourself…_

"You had to get your mother's meals?" asked Hannibal.

"Yeah."

"How did that come about?"

"My mom has... you know. Problems." Reid pulled a wry face and described vague circles in the air with his hand. It felt like the easiest way to indicate the baroque mess that was his and Diana's relationship. "Schizophrenia. What they call schizophrenia. If such a thing as schizophrenia exists. Which...I don't know. The evidence is kinda all over the place..." He trailed off. "I pretty much took care of her from age ten."

"I see. That must have been very difficult for you. Your father is... dead?"

"An asshole."

"Ah! He does that professionally?"

"No, he's really more of a talented amateur."

"Hmm, well. This does not sound too good. I think I must see what can be done about it."

"You can stop my dad from being an asshole?" said Reid. "Because that would be amazing."

Hannibal laughed, then paused. He seemed to be considering Reid's last statement seriously. "Would it?" he asked at last.

"Would what what?"

"Would it be amazing if I stopped your father from being an asshole? Clearly you harbour a certain amount of resentment towards him."

"Oh, you think?"

"Perhaps it would be uncomfortable for you if he changed? You might find his new persona an awkward fit with your view of the world. But in any case, that was not quite what I meant. Let us leave your father to suffer the consequences of his assholeness." _Assholeness_ in Hannibal's husky European accent was a rather beautiful word. It sounded like an ancient Persian mystery religion or an esoteric branch of Judaic law. Hannibal continued. "Have you ever talked to anyone about your parents?"

"You mean like a therapist?"

"Yes."

"Only when I was a child."

"And when you were a child you had schizophrenic mother and a great deal to hide. I imagine that your whole existence depended on keeping secrets from well-intentioned adults."

Reid looked at Hannibal. "Yes," he said quietly.

"But that is true no longer and so perhaps now would be a good time to talk someone. Without fear of the consequences."

"Someone meaning you?"

"Yes."

"I think I'd rather have you as a friend, Dr Lecter."

"Why not both?"

"Can you?" Reid pulled a puzzled face. "Isn't that..."

"It is unconventional for a psychiatrist, but I am rather a fan of the unconventional. And I have done it before. More accurately I have filled this role, this dual role, for one other person. Like you he was an FBI profiler. Like you, he was a man of extraordinary intellect, of extraordinary sensibility who interested me greatly. I was able to be of great use to him. I would like to do the same for you."

"Oh. Who was it that you did this for? The other man…?"

"Will Graham."

"Oh." A little silence. "Um. He's in Baltimore State Prison for the Criminally Insane now,” pointed out Reid. “For the rest of his life."

"Yes. That is unfortunate." Hannibal spoke as if Will Graham had suffered a small inconvenience like getting a parking ticket.

The next silence stretched out for a while.

"Perhaps the fact of Will Graham's incarceration disinclines you to trust me?" This seemed to occur to Hannibal as a remote possibility.

"Well… a bit," admitted Reid reluctantly.

Hannibal nodded. “Your friend, Derek, does not trust me. He believes that I intend to seduce you."

Reid looked blank for a moment and then, in quick succession: incredulous, alarmed and embarrassed. But not hopeful. _Oh please God, not hopeful._

Hannibal raised a courteous hand in a soothing gesture. "Derek’s thought runs along predictable lines. What Derek thinks is no longer any concern of ours.”

“No,” agreed Reid. "Umm. OK," he said. _Wait. So did he say that he was going to seduce me? Or that he wasn't? Fuck. What did I just agree to?_

"Excellent! Then we will pour ourselves another glass of wine and celebrate our new friendship!"

_Oh, friendship. OK._ "Great," said Reid out loud. _And about the whole seduction thing, just so you know, I'd be perfectly fine with that too._


	11. Dr Reid warns against the dangers of over-intellectualisation

“Some fields of investigation,” said Reid, “actively resist intellectualisation.”

“Say what?” said Morgan

“Some fields of investigation...” began Reid again.

“Yeah-yeah-yeah. Translation?”

“There’s a whole lot of stuff you can’t find out by thinking about it. You have to experience it. Through the body. Sensually." Reid looked placidly at Morgan as if it had been Morgan who had spent the last eight years rationalising the hell out of everything, while Reid had been pleading with him to explore the physicality of life.

Morgan’s mouth opened a couple of times, apparently unable to find words. Eventually he said, “You do see the irony here?”

Reid frowned and narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“Just out of interest, how did you reach this astonishing conclusion?”

“Hannibal said so. He’s teaching me about wine. We went to three wine-tastings last weekend. Romanian merlot. A comparison of South American and Australian wines made from Syrah grapes. And then Bulgarian Valley of the Roses wines. The last one was just for fun. Those are all red wines. Hannibal says I’m not ready for white wine yet. Hannibal says…” 

And so it began.

Over the next month Morgan, J.J., Hotch, Prentiss and Garcia were treated to Hannibal Lecter’s views on a wide variety of topics including:

• child-psychology

• the cultivation of carrots

• the operas of Richard Wagner

• the psychology of gambling

• God

• city-planning

• memory

• someone called Ferdinand Pichard

• cryptic crosswords

• the music of Philip Glass

• abstract expressionism 

• the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges

• a comparison of the Swedish and American prison systems

• lambs: circumstances under which they are silent, circumstances under which they aren't

• European and American consumerism

• the correct way to dress a salad

• the relative merits of chamber and symphony orchestras 

Rossi circumvented the whole Hannibal Lecter thing in one fell swoop by stating at the outset: “I’m sure he’s great, but I’m just not that interested.” For some reason Reid respected this, causing Morgan, Prentiss and J.J. to regard Rossi with envy and resentment for the rest of the month. Hotch -- the only person on the planet who could actually have made Reid shut up -- seemed (bizarrely in Morgan’s opinion) to be mildly interested in Dr Lecter’s many and varied opinions and kept on saying how pleased he was that Reid had finally found a friend who was able to meet him on an intellectual level.

This was a new side to Reid. He had never been this entranced by someone else’s intellect before. At least not by anyone still living. Plato, Nietzsche and Carl Jung -- Reid’s usual go-to guys -- were now swept aside in favour of Hannibal Lecter. J.J. and Garcia discussed it privately. Their conclusion was that Plato, Nietzsche and Jung had lost a lot of ground by their complete and utter failure to take Reid out to fun wine-tastings or cook him special dinners with a view to educating his palate. Plus, as Garcia demonstrated by bringing up their pictures on Wikipedia, neither Nietzsche nor Carl Jung were exactly what you would call hotties. And even if Plato had been handsome (which J.J. and Garcia were rather inclined to doubt), he wasn’t currently available to be looked at or swooned over. Un-pin-downable as Reid’s sexuality was, J.J. and Garcia agreed there did seem to be a certain amount of swooning going on.

The following Tuesday, on the way back from Boise, Idaho:

“He says ‘Hannibal says’ one more time and I’m throwing him off the plane,” muttered Morgan.

“I’m not sure you’ll get the door closed before you get sucked out with him,” said J.J., who was skim-reading a pile of police reports.

“I’m prepared to take that chance. Don’t try and talk me out of it.”

“Hey, I’m all for it. Just let me know when you’re going to do it so I can hold onto something.”


	12. Reid gets an email in a completely new language

Reid got an email he couldn't make anything of. It arrived while he was drinking his first coffee of the day and eating a piece of toast.

It wasn't in any language he'd ever seen before. He didn't believe it was any language that existed. Or, more precisely, it probably hadn't existed up until the moment he got the email. It was possible, of course, that it was just gibberish, random strings of letters. But he didn't think so. There were patterns there that looked very much like language. He thought -- because his mind worked that way -- that he could see which words were verbs, and from their position, he'd have said the whole thing was a series of exhortations. Plus there were exclamation marks at what appeared to be the ends of the sentences.

Someone (some rather excitable person) had sent him an email (possibly exhorting him to do something) in a completely new language.

Weird.

_Interesting._

It wasn't an email address he recognised. The first part of it was IrisGris1980. Which didn't mean anything to him. Other than that he'd been born in 1980 and iris was his mother's favourite flower. Was that significant?

He wondered if he should get Garcia to trace it. Maybe this was some sort of stalkery person who knew his birth year? There had been a few suspects over the years who had identified with Reid in some obsessive way or other. Adam Jackson, Nathan Harris...

Then he wondered if it was from Hannibal; not because it was particularly likely that Hannibal would have sent it, but more because just at the moment his thoughts would occasionally return to Hannibal. Occasionally. Meaning no more than every thirty seconds or so. 

But then he had to stop wondering and go to work because it was half past seven. The working day took over. He forgot about it.


	13. "Tell me about your mother"

"A child sees a parent failing and feels ashamed. Likely, he both resonates with the parent’s own sense of shame and feels embarrassed for her. She appears maimed and sickly, unable to do what she must do. We imagine him fantasising about how _he_ will save her... And he will take care of her in a way his father has not." _An Absorbing Errand_ , Janna Malamud Smith

"Tell me about your mother."

"She told me once that we were born in the wrong time. She'd just read The Divided Self and she was intoxicated by it. Overwhelmed by it. She wanted to go and sit at the feet of R D Laing because, she said, he was the only psychiatrist in the world who actually respected people in a state of psychosis. He was the one doctor in the western hemisphere who saw schizophrenia as a potentially creative state of mind. We were going to get on a plane to London and go live in his experimental community of poets and schizophrenics and hippies and therapists and geniuses. Mom saw herself taking LSD, having visions, having affairs -- my dad had been gone a few months by then -- painting pictures, holding court to mystics and celebrities."

Hannibal frowned slightly. "When was this? That your mother had this desire to go to London?"

"1990. I was ten."

"1990?"

"Yeah," said Reid. "So I expect you can see the fundamental flaw in this brilliant plan. Which is that Laing's experiment had wound up 20 years previously and Laing himself had died of a heart attack the year before."

"How did your mother react when she realised?"

"It was," Reid looked down at his long fingers twining and untwining, and paused for a moment, "awful. I think it was awful for her. She'd sort of told herself that this was her one last chance at dignity. Her last chance at a life that wasn't, I don't know, _grey_. And it just evaporated right in front of her. I didn't really understand. I was just a kid. Later on when I read about Laing's experiment I could see what she meant about it being the perfect place for us. She was this out-of-control, beautiful, visionary schizophrenic and I was this weird kid who read books in medieval Swedish. We'd 've fitted right in. I mean in suburban America we were just... nothing. Just contemptible. But in R D Laing's wacky house of anti-psychiatry, we'd 've been fucking rock stars." Reid laughed.

The room where Hannibal met his patients was huge and beautiful, full of paintings, books, sculptures. Reid wanted a room just like it (though he hadn't known that until this moment). Depressed, tearful people must visit this room every week, he supposed, but they never left anything of themselves behind. The room remained itself. Shadowy. Serene. Untouched. Hannibal liked drama in pictures, but the pictures he chose essentially lacked colour: tenebrous oils, crepuscular etchings, sombre pen-and-ink drawings. In fact the whole room was a study in funereal tones: blues, blacks, greys and bronzes, the only colour being the curtains at the tall windows which had wide bands of the most vivid sanguinary scarlet, like a Cardinal's robe. It was odd, thought Reid looking at the pictures on the wall, how from a distance they all seemed to resolve themselves into grotesque shapes, as if they all showed mutilations, mutations or torture. (But this, he decided, was probably just a quirk of his own psyche and nothing to do with Hannibal's artistic choices).

The peace of the room reminded him of a garden and...

_...just for a moment he was in a ruined garden with great horned statues looming over him. The dark lines of drawings and pictures became the blackest ivy shrouding everything, while at the centre there was a flight of broken steps leading down between tall urns to a pool of dark water. Desolation and despair. Heart-pounding terror..._

_Oh, for Christ's sake,_ he told himself, _get a fucking grip!_ He brought himself back to normality with an effort. He wasn't in a garden; he was safe in Hannibal's office. There was no scary pool of black water; there was only Hannibal.

He cleared his throat, shifted his position in his chair. "What's your take on Laing?" he asked. "You must have a view."

"He allowed himself to think the unthinkable about madness and sanity. I have a great deal of respect for people who can think the unthinkable."

Reid nodded, but his thoughts had already gone back to his mother. "You know," he said, "Whenever I talk about how my mother's mental illness affected me, I always make it appear that it was something completely separate from me, that I knew what was delusion and what wasn't. But that wasn't how it really was."

"How was it?"

"I used to walk home from school by this complicated route. Like I'd walk three sides of a block to avoid going down certain streets."

"Why?"

"Because those were the streets that she said the demons lived on. Or the aliens. Or the demon-aliens. I know it was stupid. But she was my mom. I couldn't…" He lapsed into silence.

"You were a child. You couldn't entirely separate yourself from your mother's perceptions."

"Yes."

"And you felt ashamed of that."

"Oh, yeah."

"Do you still feel ashamed?"

Silence.

"Well, that's the thing." Reid stared off into the shadows and wove his fingers together again. "They all think -- at work they all think that I'm scared of having a schizophrenic break. They say things like, 'The moment that you are wandering round the streets aimlessly, Reid, that's when I'll be concerned about you.' They think they're reassuring me. They're sweet like that. But the truth is I don't need a schizophrenic break to see the world the way she does. It's always there. Right beside me." He gestured vaguely at a point just behind his right shoulder. "My mother's madness. I just choose not to look there. Always, every day, I choose not to see it."

"That must be very tiring for you."

"Yeah. Yeah. It is. Headaches and such. It's why I like drugs." He corrected himself. "One of the reasons I like drugs. I can just let go. Be that person that she made me into. Take a little vacation in crazyland." Reid lifted his face and gazed at Hannibal with emptied-out, shadowed eyes. "Does that, I don't know, disgust you?"

"No. As I told you, the unconventional neither alarms nor disgusts me. Generally I am rather in favour of it."

"Oh. Good." Reid was exhausted now. He twisted his messy curls around his long fingers and stared into the shadows. The room was silent again for a while.

"Tell me about your father."

"He's an asshole."

Beyond the windows rain was falling. America was silvered all over with rain, ghostly and elusive. 

"There isn't really any more to say about him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quotation at the beginning is about Charlie Chaplin, another genius with a mentally ill mother and deeply inadequate, absent father.


	14. William Reid, attorney-at-law

_"Tell me about your father."_

_"He's an asshole. There isn't really any more to say about him."_

But of course there was a great deal more.

Supposedly Reid had an eidetic memory. At the age of ten he had been told by two cognitive developmental psychologists (one a retro-Lacanian, the other a neo-Vygotskian) that this was the only explanation for his unusually vivid and precise powers of recall. For many years he had accepted this; but he was beginning to wonder if such a thing as an eidetic memory actually existed.

Sure he could remember dates, texts and speeches with exactness, but when it came to the emotional and psychological significance of past scenes and conversations, or the synthesis of actions, speech and attitudes that make up a human personality -— whether his own or someone else’s -- his memories seemed just as malleable as everyone else’s. An example. For years he’d had a picture in his head of his father -— of what his father was like before he left Reid and Reid’s mother. Reid’s memory was of someone not unlike Aaron Hotchner, who every morning picked up his briefcase and went away to his job as an attorney at Wieder, Kirschenbaum and Moore. This tall, strong, handsome man had looked at his delusional wife and his fragile, friendless son and found them both wanting. These broken people did not —- could not -— fit into the successful American life of a successful American lawyer. So Reid’s father had left to find the sort of wife who remembered to put clothes on and to father the sort of children who would have beaten Reid up on sight.

Or so Reid supposed.

But then, at the age of twenty-seven, he had met his father again. It turned out that William Reid had not married for a second time; in fact he seemed as solitary as Reid himself. He was several inches shorter than Reid remembered; a conventionally dressed man with a conventionally ordered mind. He had a fixed half-smile, permanently poised between an apology and a sneer. His eyes were the same: there was something cringing in them, and at the same time something arrogant and sarcastic. And Reid had wondered what his tall, beautiful, brilliant (albeit completely insane) mother could ever have seen in this bloodless, dried-up little person. And Reid had seriously considered asking for a DNA test to find out if they really were related. _Would that be rude? And if so, who to?_ Tact was something Reid didn't really get.

In the intervening three years Reid and his father had met exactly twice. In the autumn of 2011 they had had dinner together at the Bellagio. During this dinner they had learnt the following:

1a) Reid's father thought that there were few things in the world as fascinating than federal consumer credit law. Reid didn't.

1b) Reid thought that there were few things in the world as fascinating than Nietzsche's dichotomy of the Dionysian and the Apollonian. Reid's father didn't.

2a) Reid's father thought that Reid's mother could have made more of an effort not to go insane. Reid didn't.

2b) Reid thought his father could have made more of an effort to care for Reid’s mother when she went insane. Reid’s father didn’t.

3a) Reid thought that the aria, “Erbarme dich” from Bach’s St Matthew Passion was quite possibly the greatest expression of human grief and longing in all of Western art, and that you didn’t have to be Christian or even spiritual to relate to it. Reid’s father didn’t.

3b) Reid’s father thought that Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” was quite possibly the greatest expression of human longing in all of Western art, and that you didn’t have to be American or even white working-class to relate to it. Reid didn’t.

4) Reid's father believed in work as the measure of a man and quite possibly as a means of secular redemption. Before the dinner Reid would have agreed with this to some extent, but now he knew his father thought so too he intended to do some serious re-evaluating.

"Well, this has been fun," said Reid at the end of the dinner. He decided that neither of his parents were the sort of people you wanted to meet when you were entirely sober. 

A year later his father was in Washington on business and invited Reid to a drinks party to meet some clients. Reid was so high that he really had very little idea what sort of impression he’d made on his father's business associates, but with any luck it was a resoundingly bad one.


	15. Blood

Reid and Hannibal were talking about Will Graham.

"Does it upset you?" asked Reid. "That amount of betrayal?"

"No," said Hannibal. "Will resents me because I was not able to help him. He tells people I am a killer. Perhaps there is a sense in which that is true. I was his therapist and his friend and so I bear some of the responsibility for the people he killed." Hannibal was chopping vegetables for a mirepoix.

"That's not your fault," protested Reid. "You're blameless. Don't do that to yourself." He frowned. "I don't know if you've noticed, Hannibal, but serial killers do seem to get obsessed with you. Not just Graham. There was that terrible man, Tobias Budge." Reid looked around Hannibal's kitchen. "Did Budge attack you here?"

"No, it was at my office."

"Horrible," said Reid with feeling. A thought struck him. "We were both attacked by serial killers called Tobias. Don't you find that strange?"

"You and I have many things in common, but that is certainly one of the more bizarre," agreed Hannibal with the utmost calm.

"You had to kill Tobias Budge," said Reid, sadly. "And I had to kill Tobias Hankel. We both had to do that to save our own lives."

Hannibal put down the kitchen knife. "Spencer?"

Reid sighed. "You empathise with people for a living. It must have been awful for you to have to take a life. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. If ever, God forbid, another serial killer arrives in your office, don't tackle him yourself. Promise me that."

"And what should I do instead?"

"Call me," said Reid, as if it were obvious.

"What good will that do?"

"I have a gun. I'll come and protect you."

"And if the serial killer is already in the room?"

"Oh, yeah. I guess that won't be much use. I might be in Albuquerque or something."

"I can ask him to wait until you get here. We will hope for a polite serial killer."

"Are there any?"

"Very few, it is true. It is a vocation that attracts the surly and ill-mannered. Now, come here and I will teach how to use a knife. It is high time, Dr Reid, you acquired some proper culinary skills. You will find that chopping things is remarkably soothing."

* * *

Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane seemed even more finely calculated to produce a mood of mind-numbing despair than the average prison. The sound of Reid's footsteps was swallowed up in the silence. The light was grey; it bleached the life and colour out of everything: the walls, the faces of the orderlies, the skin of Reid's hands, Even the world beyond the windows - the other, non-clinical, non-custodial world - looked dead and hopeless.

Will Graham sat in a barred cell. He was a slight man. His brown hair made soft curls against his temples. His features were delicate, pretty even. But madness had whittled and pinched his face into stark hollows and dark shadows; the skin over his cheekbones was stretched so tightly that it looked like it might break; and his nose was so sharp and pointed that Reid wanted to spear a piece of paper on the end of it just to see if it would stick. He pictured Will Graham with a letter-size piece of paper on the end of his nose.

_Ok, maybe that was a slightly weird idea._

"Another PhD student come to categorise me?" When Will Graham spoke he grimaced as if the words were sour in his mouth, as if the taste of language itself was vile and he was having to force himself to say anything. He did not meet Reid's eye, but kept his gaze on a point a little to the left or right of Reid and well below Reid's eye-line.

"I have all the PhDs I need, thanks. My name is Dr Spencer Reid. I'm with the FBI."

"Yes, yes. The FBI. I get a lot of them. But who are you? Exactly?"

_Exactly? There were so many answers to that question. Mathematician. Scientist. Nietzschean. Jungian. Diana Reid's son. Dr Who fan. Man pursued by his mother's demons. Man pursued by his mother's angels. Hider-in-the-dark from school bullies._ Reid picked the one that seemed most relevant. "I'm a friend of Dr Lecter."

There was a pause.

Will Graham snorted. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"I haven't lost anything."

"Not yet perhaps."

Despite his words Will Graham didn't sound the slightest bit sorry. He sounded gratified, as if the moment Reid had appeared, he had wanted terrible things to happen to him. And now terrible things would.

"So, umm..." Reid had prepared a list of questions about Will Graham's crimes. They were good questions. But now he realised he had no interest in asking them; and the questions he really did want to ask (questions such as _Why are you being so mean to Hannibal Lecter? What the hell is wrong with you?_ ) were perhaps slightly off topic and the teensiest bit unprofessional.

So he began again. "So what do you do here? All day. By yourself."

"Think."

"About?"

Will Graham pulled his mouth into an odd shape. It was perhaps meant as a smile. "Hannibal Lecter."

"In what way think about him?" _Should I have asked that? Maybe he has vivid sexual fantasies about Hannibal. No? Oh well, that would just be me then._

Will Graham closed his eyes slowly. Opened them again. When he spoke again, his speech was different, fluid, rapid even. And the trick that he had of gazing off to the side of Reid was like something a blind man might do and added to the impression Reid had of listening to an oracle, to a voice in the dark.

"I trace his actions in my mind. I follow him to the slaughter-place. The tide of blood rises round my feet. I slip and fall in it. It is always with me, the blood and the smell of blood. I lay myself down in blood at night and I rise in blood in the morning. I rise and follow him again. I listen to the screams of the victims. I watch the separation of muscle from connective tissue, of connective tissue from bone. At that moment I am both him and the victim. I am the knife. I sift through the entrails and I try to discern his thoughts. I search for his design." Will Graham's eyes looked dark-dazzled. He was breathing hard - but whether from emotional derangement or sexual excitement Reid couldn't tell. "Do you know what I find?"

"Tell me."

"Nothing."

Will Graham fell into silence and Baltimore fell into silence with him. Reid waited and after a while Graham moved away from the bars and wandered about his cell.

"I have forgotten what your name is," said Will Graham. "No," he made a dismissive gesture, "don't bother to tell to me. You won't need it much longer anyway." He arranged his face into the grim smile again. "Woe unto you! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones."

"Who is like a whited sepulchre?"

"You. Me. Anyone who's ever sat at Hannibal Lecter's dinner-table. Our flesh is now the flesh of dead men and women. The fat of murder victims oozes from our pores. Their tissue is caught between our teeth and our breath smells of their blood. This is where he buries his victims." He placed one hand on his own chest and flung the other arm out, gesturing at Reid.

"What did you mean when you said that you'd found nothing?" asked Reid.

"What I said."

"That the evidence against Hannibal didn't stack up? That there was no evidence? Is that what you meant?"

Will Graham laughed. Weak, sad, ironic laughter. "No. No, that is not what I meant. I meant that nothing was what I found. I meant that I have examined Hannibal Lecter's actions and found no reason there. No rationality, no desire, no compulsion even. _Nothing._ No light, no love, no conscience. _Nothing._ Nothing as a positive. Nothing as an end in itself. Nothing as an ultimate goal. What is it that drives his murders? _Nothing._ If Hannibal Lecter could reach out his hand and squeeze out the stars and make the whole world into nothing, he would do it. For the love of Nothing. Get inside the head of Hannibal Lecter and all you do is fall. Endlessly. Into Nothing."

Will Graham went and sat down on his bed. He stared at the opposite wall. "I'm tired now," he said. "We'll talk some more when you return."

"Er, I wasn’t particularly intending to return. Sorry."

"Oh, you will. You see, I've figured out who you are. You're what Hannibal's replaced me with. You're the new me."

* * *

The next day Hotch called Reid into his office. He said, "You went to see Will Graham?"

"Yeah. I hope that was OK?"

"Not really. It's not our case. It's Jack Crawford's. You should have asked him, Reid."

"Oh. Oh yeah. Sorry. I didn't think. Has Crawford said anything?"

"Not yet. But give him time."

"Oh. Do you think I should apologise?"

"No, It's best if I do it on your behalf. Don't worry. It'll be fine. But don't do it again."

"Thanks."

"How was he? Graham?"

Reid rolled his eyes. "Makes you appreciate the stupid ones. The articulate ones are _really_ disturbing."

Hotch laughed.


	16. The Lecterisation of Spencer Reid

Reid turned up at the work in a new suit. He'd occasionally worn suits before - one that was left over from his aunt's wedding stuck in Morgan's mind - but this was different. This was a suit that was all about sex appeal. This was a suit that was tailored to his shape, a suit that must have cost a substantial amount of money. It was a medium slate wool with a faint honey pinstripe that echoed the colour of his eyes and his hair.

Plenty of the old Reid still remained. It wasn't like he'd undergone a complete makeover or anything. His messy hair still tumbled into his eyes and he appeared to have only shaved half his face (presumably because he’d been struck by a new thought about polynomial time or quantum something-or-other and had forgotten that he was still supposed to be shaving). The suit itself was covered in crumbs from his breakfast. It didn't matter. He looked stunning. 

Hotch did a slight double-take when he saw him.

Morgan opened his mouth to make a joke and then thought better of it. Morgan looked at Reid in a suit that Hannibal Lecter had chosen, wearing perfume that Hannibal Lecter had bought, smiling at thoughts Hannibal Lecter had put in his head, and he thought gloomily that it scarcely mattered any more whether Reid was sleeping with Lecter. Very few people gave their lovers the sort of power over their lives, that Reid seemed to have ceded to Lecter without a second thought. A sexual relationship seemed minor in comparison.

* * *

“I don’t understand,” said Hotch. “I thought you liked Hannibal Lecter. You certainly seemed to like him when you met him that one time."

This was, Morgan was forced to admit, reasonable. _Why did Hotch have to be so reasonable all the time? It was annoying._

“It wasn’t that one time. The first time I met him was at that symposium conference thing. And I didn’t like him. I thought he was peculiar. But then Reid and I had dinner at his house. And yeah, OK, I admit that then I liked him, but that's kind of my point. He’s the kind of guy you’ll always like when he’s right in front of you. But he was never interested in me. He only wanted Reid.”

“Maybe you’re jealous,” suggested Rossi.

“Oh, yeah," said Morgan. "That’s definitely it.”

Hotch stood with his arms crossed, wearing a frown. Anyone who didn't know him well would have assumed from the frown and the body-language that he was displeased about something, but Morgan and Rossi knew that this was his default frown, his I'm-perfectly-relaxed-and-actually-in-quite-a-good-frame-of-mind frown. "Other than persuade Reid to buy a suit..." began Hotch.

"Which, heinous as it is, we can't actually arrest him for," said Rossi.

"Shut up, Dave," said Hotch, mildly. "Other than persuade Reid to buy a suit, what is it that you think Lecter's done?"

Morgan sighed and opened his hands wide in a gesture intended to convey the vast but un-pin-downable nature of the problem. "I don't know..." 

"He looks good, Morgan," coaxed Rossi, presumably referring to Reid. "Really good. _Italian_ good."

"Yeah, but... Listen. At this famous dinner-party that Reid and I went to, Lecter asked me about my family and I ended up telling him stuff about my dad dying that I’ve hardly ever told anyone. Hell, some of it I don’t think I even articulated to myself before.”

“So?” said Hotch. "He's a psychiatrist. Getting people to open up is his field of expertise. I still don't see..."

“Oh, come on! This was at a dinner party, not therapy. There were eight other people present - one of them Reid. I don’t mean that they heard any of it. They were all talking. But it was strange. It's not what I do. You know this. You know it's not what I do.”

“Were you drunk?” asked Rossi.

“I was drinking. I wasn’t drunk. It was him. He makes you open up. He puts no visible effort into it. As far as I can tell he puts no visible effort into anything. He sends out some sort of - I don’t know - alien pheromone or hypnotic mind-ray or something. You end up telling him anything and everything. He’s insidious. Seductive would be another word for it, I guess.”

“Seductive?” said Rossi. “Is Lecter gay?”

“No clue,” said Morgan.

“Is Reid gay?” asked Rossi.

There was a pause.

“Why are you both looking at me?” asked Hotch.

Another pause - slightly more awkward this time. Fortunately it was immediately smoothed over by Morgan saying something useful and to the point that sounded like, “Errrrm buhlfffffff…”

Rossi rolled his eyes and took over. “Because you’re the lead supervisory agent and unit chief,” he explained to Hotch in a patient, you-really-should-have-figured-that-out-by-now sort of way.

Hotch gave them both a look that was on a midway point between exasperated and haughty. Then he dropped the haughty bit and said, “I’ve no idea what Reid is. He’s Reid. I’ve always assumed that meant a whole bunch of labels don’t apply.”

“What? Labels like gay and straight?” asked Morgan.

“Yes. Labels like gay and straight. Reid’s sort of… oblique.”

“Oblique?” scoffed Morgan.

“At an angle to...”

“I know what it means for chrissakes,” said Morgan. “Jesus. Oblique. Trust Reid to come up with a sexuality all to himself. It goes Kinsey nought to six... Reid.”

"Look," said Hotch. "I don't pretend to understand what it is about Lecter that's got you so worried. I've only spoken to him a couple of times. Talk to Jack Crawford. Jack knows Lecter well and he's as clear-sighted as anyone in the FBI."

"OK. Yeah. Thanks."

Rossi didn't say anything. He was deep in serious thought. There ought to be a joke that involved Reid, sexuality and "at an angle to". He just needed time to work on it.

* * *

Two days later Morgan descended four floors to Jack Crawford's office. Crawford was standing at his desk, intent on reading some papers. He raised his heavy Minotaur head and his black glance met Morgan's. "Remind me," he said.

"Derek Morgan. I'm on Aaron Hotchner's team."

"Oh yes. Yes. Of course. What can I do for you?" The meaning was implicit: _What can I do for you quickly?_

"It's a personal thing. SSA Hotchner thought I should talk to you. I wanted to ask about Dr Lecter. He's recently… He's gone out of his way to befriend another member of my team and I wondered if you could tell me something about him. What he's like." Morgan paused so that Jack Crawford could begin chatting informally about Hannibal Lecter.

Jack Crawford didn't begin chatting informally; he merely gazed at Morgan with a stony Minotaur gaze.

"I have some concerns," offered Morgan.

The stony gaze was tinged with faint incredulity. "Concerns? Dr Lecter is a personal friend of mine. And you're asking me… Actually I don't know what the Hell it is that you're asking me. You seem to be asking if a friend of _mine_ is a suitable friend for a colleague of _yours_?”

"The thing is, the member of my team, the person that Dr Lecter is…" Fixated upon was the phrase that came to Morgan's mind. "...interested in, it's Reid."

The moment he'd said this Morgan knew that it was a mistake.

"Dr Reid?" There was the faintest evidences of a smirk on Crawford's face.

The Spencer Reid joke was a form of humour peculiar to Quantico and its immediate environs. It traded on the image of Reid as the perpetual nerd, the lanky, can't-meet-your-eye geek, the thirty-one-year-old virgin who avoided speaking to women by pretending to faint. It was stupid, cruel nonsense; and Morgan hoped to God that Reid didn't know half of it. But even people like Crawford who despised the jokes and the people who told them were affected by it, drew some of their idea of Reid from it. And Morgan was uncomfortably aware that what he was doing now - trying to vet Reid's friends - only fed into in that perception.

"Dr Lecter is an exceptionally brilliant, honourable and cultured man. If Dr Lecter is taking an interest in Dr Reid, then all I would say is that Dr Reid is very fortunate. That is all." Jack turned back to his papers.

At the door, as Morgan was going out, he encountered a member of Jack's team, coming in: Beverly Katz of the unclouded Asian beauty and midnight hair. Another time Morgan might have tried a little flirting. Now he barely grunted. After he had gone, Jack glanced up at Beverly. "Do you ever get the feeling that you and I are the only sane people in the building?"

"All the time," she said.

On the way back to his own office, Morgan soothed his humiliation with vows of vengeance upon Jack Crawford for being a jerk, Hannibal Lecter for being a superior European asshole, Hotch for being so completely and uncharacteristically wrong and Reid for being Reid.

"How did that go?" Hotch asked cheerfully.

The look Morgan gave him must have been quite something because Hotch actually took a step backwards, muttered, "Sorry," and left.


	17. Dear Manwë, Yours Bregolas

Dear Manwë

Someone is sending me emails in a language I don't recognise. There've been seven so far. I've no idea who my mystery-correspondent is. I asked my friend but he says it's not him. It's clearly an invented language. I've done a bit of work on it and I can see strong links to Middle English and possibly medieval Finnish (though less sure about this). This leads me to believe that it's Tolkienian. Maybe Primitive Quendian or Naffarin?

I don't have any samples of Tolkien's languages here (other than the fragments in _The Simarillion_ and _The Lord of the Rings_ ). My library time is a bit restricted by work right now and you're the only serious Tolkienian linguist I know. You'll find the latest email below. I'd be really grateful if you could confirm for me which of Tolkien's languages this is so I can start translating it.

Yours

Bregolas

* * *

Dear Bregolas

Way off base, man. NOT one of Tolkien's. I get what you mean about the similarities to Middle English but you're ignoring the strong Ancient Semitic influence. This guy has a serious allergy to vowels. I guess you went for Tolkien because of the repeated sequences, _ITHR/L. SR/L. MCH/L_? You're equating /L with _el_ , right? Tolkien's Elvish languages have _el_ (a word meaning star) and it's a common syllable at the end of Elvish words and names, e.g. Galadriel, Glorfindel. But you'll also find _el_ in Semitic languages too, where it means deity. My guess?

  * ITHR/L = Ithuriel
  * MCH/L = Michael
  * which leads me to conclude SR/L = Sariel



These are the names of _angels_ , not Elves. Maybe look for a Middle English specialist with a working knowledge of Ancient Hebrew or Hittite?

Yours

Manwë

* * *

Dear Manwë

Ouch. Not usually so wide of the mark as this. Thanks, man. Your insight very helpful. I know several people with a degree of familiarity with Ancient Semitic languages. Not sure why'd they'd be sending me this though. See you at the next Tolkien Society Oxonmoot?

Yours

Bregolas

* * *

Dear Bregolas

_Ta nae amin saesa._ My pleasure. _Lissenen ar' maska'lalaith tenna' lye omentuva._ Sweet water and light laughter till next we meet.

Yours

Manwë


	18. "Would you like to know her name?"

Delaunay’s was not what you would call a coffee shop. Its style - all gleaming dark wood, brass and mirrors - was meant to be reminiscent of a grand café in Budapest or Vienna or somewhere like that. The serving staff wore white shirts, black waistcoats and vast European-style white aprons. But underneath it was resolutely modern, commercial, American. It boasted seventeen different varieties of single-origin coffee beans and four house blends, all described on the menu in the sort of brain-liquefying gibberish that could only come from a corporate marketing team. But Hannibal Lecter was paying no attention to the menu; in matters of food and drink he was only ever guided by his own formidable opinions. “For me,” he told the server, “a cafetière of the Harra Longberry.” His glanced flickered over Reid. “And, based on your appreciation of the Cabernet Sauvignon last week, you will have the Ethiopian Mocha Djimma.”

“OK,” said Reid. He continued his exposition of a new idea he had had about Icelandic sagas.

It was Saturday morning in Baltimore, a morning that would be spent at an art gallery, then food shopping, followed by lunch and a concert of Tenebrae Responsories by Tomas Luis de Victoria. Sunday was reserved for Hannibal cooking while Reid taught himself to play Hannibal's harpsichord or drifted about the kitchen or curled up in the armchair in the corner; they would drink wine and talk and talk and talk. Reid spent every weekend in Baltimore. During the week when their schedules allowed Hannibal would drive to Washington and they would have dinner together. Soon they would go to Europe. Neither of them had proposed it; it had simply become obvious that this was what was going to happen. Hannibal would say things like, “You’ll understand the medieval mind better when we visit San Gimignano and Cambridge. Even seeing Paris and London will help. The townscapes of medieval cities are the autopsies of their society — its bones. You need to see them laid out in front of you.”

“Yes,” Reid would say, “Yes, that makes sense.”

Once Hannibal had burst out laughing in an art gallery because Reid had said something about the way the light had been rendered in a John Singer Sargent watercolour. “No, no! You may not talk about the light of the Mediterranean until you have seen it. I absolutely forbid it. It is like talking about Bach without having heard a single note. When we are there, when we reach Tuscany and Marrakesh - then and only then, Dr Reid — you may tell me your opinion.”

All the people whom Hannibal had known when Reid and Morgan had had dinner at his house that first time - all those friends who had seemed so delighted to be taken notice of by Hannibal — had simply disappeared. There was nothing extraordinary in this as far as Reid was concerned. He did not need any other friend, so why should Hannibal?

“You have an admirer,” murmured Hannibal in an amused tone.

“Sorry?”

"Someone has been looking at you for several minutes. With desire."

Reid followed Hannibal’s gaze to one of the waiting staff and caught her eye without meaning to. She looked away hurriedly. She was young - possibly early twenties - rather tall and slender with a pale oval face. Her hair, pulled back severely into a knot, was neither curly nor straight, a dullish, uninteresting light brown. She resumed her work, fetching water glasses, speaking to the people at another table. She seemed perfectly competent but there was about her a sort of residual awkwardness and nerviness that reminded Reid strongly of himself. There was only one part of her that he thought beautiful — a veil of freckles, both dramatic and delicate, that covered her face, descending to her suprasternal notch.

“Is she attractive?” asked Hannibal. He had the air of someone conducting an experiment of some kind.

“No,” said Reid sulkily.

“Would you like to know her name?”

“Not really. Was she the one who served us?”

“Yes. Shall I tell you her perfume? It is a surprisingly sophisticated choice and is evidence of a much more interesting interior life than her plain face and awkward body would suggest. She has the face of a European peasant.”

Reid laughed (though he was not finding this particularly amusing). “She's a server. She shouldn’t be wearing perfume at all.”

“I didn't say she was. She wore it last night. It is quite ghostly. Would you like to know her occupation?”

“She’s a server.”

“Her other occupation. Her true vocation.”

“She doesn’t interest me, Hannibal. Not erotically. Nor in any other way. How do you know all this anyway?”

“I often find it helps my concentration if I allow part of my mind - the surface part of my mind - to play with some small problem. While we have been talking I have been investigating the young woman who is so fascinated by you, and I have made discoveries. But since you do not return her interest we dismiss her from the world.” Hannibal made a gesture. “She no longer exists. She disappears into the ether together with her name, her perfume and her vocation.”

* * *

“Euridice Westcott,” said Jack Crawford, nine days later. “Postgraduate music student and server at Delaunay’s in Baltimore, where, at five o’clock this morning she was found. In five separate pieces. This apparently is a joke on the part of the killer. There was to have been a concert tonight at the Peabody Institute — seven new compositions by seven students. Euridice Westcott’s work for orchestra and choir was to have been the highlight. It is called Five Separate Pieces. Obviously they've cancelled the concert.”

“Is anything missing from the body?” asked Beverly Katz.

“The small intestine,” said Jimmy Price.

“Chitterlings,” said Beverly Katz.

“What?” said Jack Crawford.

“It’s what the small intestines of meat animals are called. Assuming that this is the Ripper. And assuming Will Graham was right and the Ripper is eating whatever he takes.”

“Chit’lins,” mused Crawford, unconsciously slipping into the vernacular of his forebears.

* * *

“What are these?” asked Reid, four days later.

“Andouillettes,” said Hannibal. “Sausages made from chitterlings and tripe, poached and then grilled.”

“When did you make them?”

“One evening this week. I thought they would be perfect with the Chablis we bought last week.”

“Mmm,” said Reid. “They’re the best. The absolute best.”

“And how do you like the wine?”

Reid turned his attention to the wine, sniffing and tasting with focused attention. Just as Hannibal had taught him.


	19. “Your mother invented her own language?”

In Jack Crawford's suite of offices in the basement he and his team were discussing Euridice Westcott. Present were Jimmy Price, Brian Zeller and Beverly Katz.

“Where,” asked Jack, “is the music?”

“Sounds like the title of a bad 80s disco song,” sniggered Brian Zeller.

Jack gave him a look that could melt concrete at forty paces.

Brian Zeller shut up.

Jack said, "According to Euridice's teachers and other students, she kept her compositions in two places - on her laptop and on an mp3 player. The laptop was in her room. Where is the mp3 player?"

"You're thinking the killer took it with him?" asked Beverly Katz.

“It’s beginning to look that way,” said Jack.

"In which case maybe this isn’t the Ripper at all," offered Jimmy Price. "The Ripper takes surgical trophies. He doesn't take personal items.”

“Maybe he’s a music-lover,” suggested Beverly Katz.

Brian Zeller's gloom grew deeper. He had wanted to say that, but he was currently feeling too cowed by Jack to say anything.

Jack Crawford pinched the fragment of beard under his bottom lip that was like a calligraphic brushstroke. "Do we have it here?" he asked at last. "The laptop?"

"Sure," said Jimmy Price. He fetched it.

"Play me something," said Crawford.

Jimmy Price fiddled with files on the laptop. "This is the most recent audio file, so presumably this is what she was working on when she died."

It began with a thin strand of melody, simple yet astonishingly beautiful. It was full of emotion, but exactly what emotion was difficult to decide. Yearning and joy and melancholy were there in equal measure. It was passionate, yet at the same time aloof, detached, almost cold. Suddenly the single melodic line opened out into a vast, shimmering landscape of sound, a hundred voices - or the electronic approximation of a hundred voices - wordlessly singing together.

Zeller didn't like it. It made him feel things that he didn't want to feel, notably that Euridice Westcott had been more talented than he was. He was about to say something cynical, when...

“It’s not original,” offered someone, half in the room, half in the corridor. "I mean it is, but not completely. It's based on another composition."

“Who’s that?” muttered Zeller. Zeller was always deeply irritated when other people tried to contribute to the work of his team. To be fair he found the contributions of the people actually in his team pretty irritating too. His own contributions, on the other hand, he found a constant source of wonderment and delight.

“Oh hi, Dr Reid,” said Beverly Katz.

Reid gave her his uncertain wave and his don’t-expect-too-much-from-me-see-how-I’m-telegraphing-social-anxiety-at-you? smile. He had a little crush on her. She was oh-so beautiful and seemed kind - like Cosima but without the whole drugs-enabling thing.

Jack Crawford raised an eyebrow. “You have something to contribute, Dr Reid?” he snapped. “Come in please. Don’t hover in the doorway.”

Reid drifted vaguely into the room in a manner guaranteed to irritate the hell out of Jack Crawford.

“Well?” said Jack Crawford.

“It’s based on a very ancient piece of music," said Reid. "A twelfth-century composition by Hildegarde von Bingen. From the style and dissonances I’d say this piece was pretty modern. As in composed in the last five years.”

"We already know that," said Jack Crawford. "The victim was working on it when she died."

"Oh," said Reid.

"Why are you here anyway?" asked Jack.

"Hotch - SSA Hotchner - asked me to get the Sienkiewicz file from you..."

Jack Crawford stared impassively at Reid.

Reid bit his lips. Jack Crawford made him deeply nervous, Jimmy Price he didn’t know and Brian Zeller was just plain horrible. He turned to Beverly as the one friendly presence in the room. “Hildegarde von Bingen was a twelfth-century mystic. My mother’s one of the foremost experts in the world on medieval female mystics. She invented her own language.”

“Your mother invented her own language?” asked Beverly, surprised.

“No. Sorry. I meant Hildegarde von Bingen.” Something seemed to strike Reid. _Diana had invented her own language. Yes._

“Why?”

“Why what?” said Reid, who had got distracted by the sudden idea about Diana.

“Why’d she invent a language?”

“Er… No one knows. She wrote music and poetry, ran a convent and taught the nuns. She had visions from early childhood, so in the modern era we’d probably class her as schizophrenic, certainly delusional.”

Early music and medieval female mystics were two subjects of which Brian Zeller was entirely ignorant. Consequently he couldn’t contradict Reid as he would have liked. So he confined himself to making scoffing noises and looking sarcastic.

Jack Crawford continued to stare at Reid.

Reid had no idea what Jack Crawford was thinking. He stared back in a thoroughly alarmed, mesmerised sort of way. He thought of the time when he was eight when he'd done some experiments on himself to see if he could make himself invisible. Perhaps he'd given up too easily on that. Yeah, he should definitely do some more work on making himself invisible.

“OK," said Jack Crawford, apparently coming to a decision, "this is the problem. There are 400 audio files on this computer that we can’t identify. If I give them to you, can you tell me which ones were composed by the victim?”

“Sure,” said Reid. “I’ll have to check with SSA Hotchner whether…”

“I’ll do that,” said Jack Crawford. “It’ll be fine.” To Jimmy Price he said, “Give Dr Reid the laptop. Now, Dr Reid, pay attention to what I'm about to say...”

"I always pay attention," said Reid, more confused than ever.

"...we're reasonably certain that the majority of these audio files exist in two places and two places only — this laptop and an mp3 player, currently missing. It's possible the killer has the mp3 player. So do not take the laptop out of this building. Do not make any duplicates of the files. Do not send the files to anyone. In fact," he looked up at Jimmy Price, "can we get the internet connection on this computer permanently disabled?"

"You want the audio files quarantined so that if the music turns up anywhere you'll know it's come from the killer?" said Reid brightly, because he liked to understand stuff.

"Mmm hmm," said Jack Crawford who didn't give a damn what Reid understood and what he didn't as long as he did as he was told. Jack Crawford left the room to call Hotch and tell him about the work Reid would be doing for Jack Crawford's team.

“You can do musical analysis?” Beverly asked Reid. 

“I never have before, but sure. It’s just like analysing anything else. The creator has stylistic quirks, habitual modes of thought and strategies that tend to get repeated throughout their work. How old was the victim?”

“Twenty. Her name was Euridice Westcott.”

“That’s good. I mean, not good that she died at twenty. But since she was so young her range of styles probably won’t be too wide. Should be quite easy.”

“Can’t we just ask the music department at JHU which compositions are hers?” asked Brian Zeller.

“Sure,” said Reid, blandly. “If you think she shared all her work-in-progress with her colleagues and professors. Most creative people don’t.”

Brian Zeller glared and made a mental note to obstruct Reid's career in every way possible, to thwart his every desire and to labour night and day to make sure he died alone, penniless, frustrated and forgotten. It was the same mental note that Brian Zeller had made about pretty much everyone he'd ever met.

Reid went up to a mezzanine, an echoing, glass-walled, glass ceilinged space which afforded a spectacular view, receding into the far distance, of several government agency parking lots. The mezzanine contained a coffee bar. People were drinking coffee and talking while bathed in a grey, wintery light that drained the colour from everything.

He found a relatively private spot and made a call.

"Hey, it's me. Have you been sending me emails in a made-up language?"

There was a silence on the other end of the phone. It was the sort of silence that only Diana Reid could produce. Her own special, what-did-I-do-to-deserve-this-dummy-for-a-son? silence. Other people were constantly pleading with Reid to tone down his intellectual brilliance. Diana would have laughed in their faces.

"Yes," she said testily.

"Uh huh. Any idea why?"

"It's obvious."

"Not to me."

Diana sighed heavily. "The emails aren't from me. They're from the angels. I told you they wanted to talk to you. But they never heard from you and so they asked me to send you those messages. Which I have now done."

_Somewhere there was a sky full of pissed-off angels waiting for him to call, crossing their arms, tapping their feet impatiently on clouds..._ He passed a hand across his face. _Jesus, why is my life so fucking weird?_

"OK," he said with a valiant attempt at patience, "but what do the messages mean?"

"How should I know? They're for you."

"But you wrote them."

"I can tell you what they'd mean to me. But that won't help you. It's what they mean to you that matters. You need to pay attention, Spencer."

"I always pay attention," said Reid for the second time in ten minutes.

"No, honey," said Diana. "You don't. Not really."


	20. Aaron Hotchner decides to make a garden

Aaron Hotchner had his work and he had his little boy. There was no time for anything else. Absolutely no time. So make time, he told himself. There ought to be one thing, just one small thing in the week that wasn’t either about insanity, death and FBI internal politics (three things with an absurdly large amount in common), or else about small children.

He considered getting a girlfriend. But he was a romantic. Love was supposed to happen to you, overwhelm you; you didn’t just plan it. (Besides any way you looked at it, getting a girlfriend was not a small thing.)

He considered taking up a new sport. But that would require planning and making arrangements with other guys - and then there would be the social side and the drinks and barbecues with other guys - or, in his case, the endless explanations to the other guys why he couldn’t make it to the drinks and barbecues, and then there was the part where the other guys began to think he was stand-offish… 

He wanted something uncomplicated. Something quiet and solitary. Something that didn’t depend on anyone except himself.

He decided to make a garden.

He knew nothing about gardens, so he’d start small. He’d start with some roses. Roses were very beautiful. You planted them and if you did it correctly, they more or less just happened by themselves — or such was his understanding. You had to prune them, of course, which involved learning some technique or other, but he could do that.

A teacher at his son’s school lent him a catalogue of roses.

One evening he sat down with a glass of red wine and opened the catalogue. He began to see why people became obsessed with roses. There were old-fashioned roses that had dense interiors crammed with petals like rumpled, tousled silk. There were creamy white roses whose petals seemed to have no colour at all and yet contained within themselves mysterious coloured shadows. There were coral-coloured roses that looked like crystallised sunsets. The catalogue offered tips as well as photographs. One rose was “…usually considered a shrub rose, but can be encouraged to become a climber.” Hotch wondered how you encouraged a rose. (Stood by its side and cheered perhaps?) Another variety took his fancy simply because it was described as “sad in the rain.” One was a mass of small, pale, fragile blooms amid dark foliage, like a constellation of sad, distant stars. The catalogue-writer, growing suddenly poetic, described it as “aloof”; it made Hotch think, for some reason, of Spencer Reid. Then he read further and the catalogue said the rose had, “Good hips in autumn” which sent Hotch into a fit of snorts and giggles.

And then he came to the rose which is called Ferdinand Pichard.

It was described as “pink, clearly striped with crimson”; but to Hotch it looked like a rose splashed with blood. It looked like a rose that had attended a massacre. He thought of the body Jack Crawford and his team were investigating - the man who’d been skinned alive and turned into something resembling a bouquet of roses. Hotch had seen photographs and wished he hadn’t. But it occurred to him now that those curlicues of peeled skin must, when fresh, have looked extraordinarily like Ferdinand Pichard roses. That was the body which might or might not be the work of the Chesapeake Ripper. Now that Jack Crawford and his team no longer had Will Graham to turn to (now that Graham was so comprehensively discredited, so thoroughly imprisoned, so completely insane), Jack’s team were having a hard time saying what was the Ripper’s work and what wasn’t.

Hotch put down the catalogue and turned on the tv. He found a bland cooking programme; he didn’t exactly watch it, more simply let it move his mind to another place. After a while he went into the kitchen and made himself a sandwich. He cut bread, sliced chicken breast, opened a jar of mayonnaise, milled salt and pepper, fetched a tomato out of the refrigerator.

Yet at the same time some part of his mind must have been turning over the name Ferdinand Pichard because suddenly he knew that he had heard it quite recently. Someone had been talking to him about Ferdinand Pichard. Who the hell was it?

* * *

The next morning Hotch went down to Jack Crawford’s office.

Hotch and Jack both had a somewhat terse style of communication; when they spoke together the conversation could sometimes get a little truncated. (Morgan and Rossi had once mimicked Hotch and Jack talking by simply barking random words at each other.)

“The rose-bouquet man?” said Hotch.

““We identified him,” said Jack. “Edward Svanqvist. Journalist.”

“I see. Good.” Hotch frowned. “I almost expected him to be called Ferdinand Pichard.”

Jack frowned. “Who’s Ferdinand Pichard?”

Hotch placed the rose catalogue on Jack's desk. “That’s a Ferdinand Pichard rose,” he said, pointing. “Look, I realise this sounds strange and I apologise if…”

“No, it’s OK. I get it,” said Jack. He stared at the blooms with their blood-bedabbled petals.

“You didn’t make the connection before?” asked Hotch.

“No.”

Hotch said, “I know someone talked to me about Ferdinand Pichard the other day, but I can’t remember who it was.”

“Talked about this rose? Or about someone called Ferdinand Pichard?”

“I’m afraid I don’t remember. I take it that it couldn’t have been anyone on your team?”

“No.”

“OK. If I remember who it was…”

“Sure,” said Jack. “Can I keep this?” He indicated the catalogue.

“Sure,” said Hotch.

Hotch returned to his own complex of offices. He knocked on J.J.'s door.

“J.J., do you know anything about rose cultivation?”

“No. Why?”

“So the name Ferdinand Pichard doesn’t ring any bells?”

“No.”

"OK. That's fine."

Hotch went back to work. It wasn't the best sort of day. It consisted of meetings. There were, in Hotch's opinion, twice as many meetings as there should have been; the meetings themselves went on twice as long as was reasonable and the people in them were twice as stupid as he'd come to expect. No, definitely not his favourite sort of day.

He didn't get to his own work until late in the day. He was still working at seven o'clock when music began to drift around the office: poignant, heart-breaking, luminously beautiful music.

He looked out of his office. Reid was still at his desk.

"Oh, sorry," said Reid, looking up as Hotch approached. "I didn't realise anyone else was still here."

“No, no, it’s fine. I came out to listen. It's beautiful.”

“Isn’t it?”

"What is it?"

"Music composed by Jack Crawford's murder victim. I'm supposed to be giving him a list of all her work - and I will. But I keep stopping just to enjoy it. I mean obviously she borrowed a lot from medieval sacred music, but she was strongly influenced by a number of contemporary European composers, Taverner, Vasks, people like that. I think if she'd lived she'd have been internationally renowned. A star."

"You're getting fascinated by this, aren't you?"

"Is it obvious?

Hotch gave Reid a fond smile. "It's always obvious, Spencer." He was about to go and finish up for the day when, without expecting anything to come of it, he asked, “Reid? You don’t remember if someone here was talking about Ferdinand Pichard recently?”

“Yes,” said Reid, making some notes about the piece that was playing.

“You do?” 

“Yes.”

“Who was it?”

“Me.”

“Oh.”

Reid continued working.

“What was the context?” asked Hotch.

Reid looked up. “Hannibal says that the Ferdinand Pichard is one of the most beautiful bourbon roses - that’s a classification of garden rose…”

“Yes, I know.”

“…one of the most beautiful bourbon roses in existence. Hannibal was considering taking up rose-cultivation and did some preliminary research, but he already has two hobbies, cooking and wine, and he decided he doesn’t have time for a third. Hannibal never does anything unless he is able to devote the requisite amount of time to doing it perfectly. Hannibal says…”

Reid had now gone into what Morgan called his I-will-now-describe-in-detail-Hannibal-Lecter’s-opinions-on-every-fucking-thing-in-the-entire-universe mode. 

“Thanks,” said Hotch. “That’s all I needed.”

So it was Reid who had been talking about Ferdinand Pichard. Or rather Lecter via Reid. They were both ridiculously well-informed men. The sort of men who, when together, presumably talked about anything and everything under the sun.

It was nothing to do with the case after all. A coincidence. Irrelevant.


	21. Reid looks at a photograph

Reid drifted into Jack Crawford’s office. There was a photograph on the table.

“Oh,” said Reid.

“Can I help you?” snapped Jack.

“This is Euridice Westcott? It’s… it’s just I hadn’t seen a photograph of her before. I didn’t…” Reid fell silent again. Jack glared at his back for a moment before deciding that ignoring him was almost as good as getting rid of him and also less trouble.

Reid studied the photograph.

She had not enjoyed the camera’s gaze; her expression was solemn and wary. _She does not interest me_ he had said. _Not erotically._ But that had been before he had heard her music. Before he had really looked at her. Now he was struck by the contrast between the pale, ascetic face with the don’t-notice-me expression and her lips which were full. _The face of a European peasant_ Hannibal had said and Reid half-understood that, half-agreed with it. It was not in the least a modern face. But to Reid's mind it was more the face of a medieval saint; the eye sockets extremely flat and shallow; the lids a neat little fold. The face was colourless as only a European face could be, the only vivid thing about it, the veil of freckles which were every shade between palest copper and darkest bronze. The photograph showed that her body had been long-limbed and thin, but sweetly proportioned. Almost a female version of his own. Perhaps that was why she’d been attracted to him. 

Reid shifted a little, uncomfortably aware that this line of thought had just caused his mouth to water. It was, he admitted, a bit late in the day to decide there was was a stirring of erotic interest now - you know, now that she was in five pieces in a steel drawer in Quantico.

_Shall I tell you her perfume?_ Hannibal had said. He needed to ask Hannibal what it was. The body would smell of nothing now but the chemicals used to clean it during the autopsy.

Reid poked his finger in his eye and rubbed it viciously. “He’s a cannibal, isn’t he?”

“The Chesapeake Ripper?" said Jack. That’s one theory.”

“Whose theory?” asked Reid.

“Will Graham’s.”

“And no one now knows whether to trust anything that Graham said,” mused Reid. “I met her once.”

“Sorry?” said Jack reading a file. Sorry? meaning _Are you still here?_

“I met her once. Euridice Westcott. Well, I saw her. She was our server at Delaunay’s. I didn’t speak to her.” He would never hear her voice now. Or rather he would never hear her physical voice. Her real, true, meaningful voice, — her music — that he had.

“Yes, well,” Jack sighed and moved on to the next piece of paper on his desk. “I imagine that she served a lot of people.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

Reid bent over the photograph of Euridice Westcott again.

Jack ignored him. He thought that if he ignored Reid for long enough, Reid would go away.

Some time later he looked up and found that it had worked.

**Author's Note:**

> This is set after the end of Hannibal series 1. I'm really not sure when in Criminal Minds and I'm not sure it matters.  
> I confess to varying from the CM canon in the following ways:  
> \- Reid is intermittently on drugs.  
> \- Diana is not in a sanatorium. She's way too interesting a character not to be out in the world causing havoc.  
> \- And I kind of got rid of the jet. Because I think it's a bit silly. But it doesn't come into the story much so please feel free to imagine it's still there if you want.  
> Also I'm not actually American. Please tell me if I got something wrong.


End file.
